‘Allen’ Review: What Happens When the Friend You Waited for Finally Shows Up

Twenty years is a long time to wait by the window. ‘Allen‘ opens on a man named Petey who never got over the alien he befriended as a boy, and that stubborn ache is the engine of this Netflix film. It arrived on November 12 and runs a brisk 105 minutes.

This is the first live action feature from Brisbane’s Ludo Studio, the team better known for ‘Bluey’. Daley Pearson and Jeffrey Walker share directing duties, with Pearson and Sophie Miller credited on the script. Knowing the pedigree, I expected something gentle and cuddly, and the film does start in exactly that register.

T.J. Power plays the grown up Petey, and he is the reason the early stretch works so well. He lets the character be funny and sad in the same breath, a man who has organised his whole adult life around a childhood afternoon. Charlotte Nicdao and Josh Helman play Carly and Jaden, the pregnant sister in law and older brother who love him and are visibly worn out by him, and they keep the story tethered to something real.

The flashbacks to 1998 are where the film is most charming. The toys, snacks and pop culture details make the Queensland setting feel lived in, and a kite festival gives the childhood scenes a warm, sun bleached glow. Edward O’Sullivan, as young Petey, sells the wonder without ever overplaying it.

Then there is Allen himself, a puppet and digital creation with eyes that do most of the acting. It is a clever piece of design, and sharing the frame with something physical clearly helps the cast. The trouble is that the film stops where it should dig deeper, and the reasons behind his return and his origins are never explored with much curiosity.

That is where my enthusiasm started to wobble. Around the halfway point the tone lurches from sweet to strange, and a comic reveal involving an Etch A Sketch sets up a moral knot the film cannot quite untie. The more it leans into that darker turn, the more Allen’s idea of affection starts to feel uncomfortable rather than touching, and the jokes land less often than they should.

The colour palette also works against the nostalgia it is chasing. Everything is so bright and polished that the handmade feeling of the best scenes gets flattened, and some of the later scenes feel a touch too tidy for the big emotions they are reaching for.

Still, I could not shake how sincerely the whole thing is made. The loneliness at its centre is real, the cast is committed, and when the film trusts its quieter moments it finds something tender about arrested development and the people who put up with it.

Where I land is a film with a big heart and an uneven nerve, one I enjoyed more than I admired. The first half is a joy, the second half wanders, and Power carries enough of it to make the trip worthwhile. I give ‘Allen’ 7 out of 10.

Did the strange turn in ‘Allen’ win you over or lose you, and do you agree with my verdict? Tell me in the comments.