M (119 minutes)

Australian comedian Rebel Wilson’s debut feature as a director has had a rocky road to the screen. Its release has been delayed by a series of lawsuits involving a tangle of allegations and counter-allegations between Wilson and her producers, so the joyous mood animating the film itself comes as a big surprise.

Adapted from a stage musical, it sits happily alongside Muriel’s Wedding and the other films from Australian cinema’s golden age of comedy. The screenplay, the music and its lyrics are by Hannah Reilly and Meg Washington, the team behind the play, and the opening number, F… My Life, performed by a stuck-up chorus of chronically discontented private schoolgirls, gives you a lively pointer to the pleasures to come.

Maeve (Charlotte MacInnes), the school captain who leads the chorus, is a vocal critic of “the patriarchy” with a fluent command of all the relevant cliches, and her protests get her expelled from school. Her mother, who also happens to be the school principal, decides Maeve should lie low for a while and is to be sent off to the country town where her uncle, Rick Simpkins (Shane Jacobson), is the mayor. Her mother tells him that she hopes he might “break her like a brumby”. It’s a suggestion to which Rick, a mild-mannered man, responds with total bewilderment.