Hating Alison Ashley PG
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Deltra Goodrem makes her big-screen movie debut in Hating Alison Ashley, a comedy about teenage angst and alienation, based on the bestseller by Robin Klein. The story is told by a 14-year-old with the decidedly unpoetic name of Erica Yurken (Saskia Burmeister), commonly called �Yuk� by most of the kids at school or, with a touch more sensitivity, �Erk� by her family. Erica sees herself as an undiscovered star of the theatre. She certainly has an overblown sense of the dramatic and she�s also a hypochondriac who can invariably be found in the school sick bay, whining about her latest ailment.
Erica lives in the unsightly part of town in the suburb of Barringa East, which appears to be heavily populated by colourful eccentrics, including the members of her family into which she is convinced she must have been adopted. Her younger sister, Jedda (Abigail Gudgeon) believes she is a horse and can be found occasionally grazing on a neighbour�s nature strip; her pothead brother, Harley (Anthony Cleave) is into astral projection and her slutty sister, Valjoy (Rachael Carpani) is a bully who takes out much of her aggression on Erica. Liz (Tracey Mann), her mum, is fine, but Erica can�t stand her live-in truck driver boyfriend, Lennie (Richard Carter), a nice guy who just wants to be friends.
Barringa East High is a disaster area where the students, including bad boy, Barry Hollis (Alexander Cappelli), run amok. Amongst this lot Erica feels smugly superior � with some justification - so of course, the other kids don�t like her. When no-nonsense teacher, Miss Belmont (Jean Kittson) walks into the classroom and brings the unruly kids into line, Erica thinks she has found an ally who will allow her to show off her loftier intellect.
It�s a short-lived moment of glory that�s cut short when new student, Alison Ashley (Goodrem) arrives. Alison not only looks sensational � and is rich to boot � but she is also smart - smarter, in fact than Erica who decides she must be the enemy.
Things come to a head when the students go off to camp, accompanied by Miss Belmont and dumb, accident-prone PE teacher, Jeff Kennard (Craig McLachlan). At camp, Erica believes that her time in the spotlight has arrived when she is given the opportunity to write, direct and star in a play, but she hasn�t banked on a devastating attack of stage fright that eliminates her from the starring role. Worse still, the part goes to Alison who displays a natural acting talent. Is there anything Alison Ashley cannot do?
But hating Alison Ashley does not come easily and, like much of the melodrama that Erica has created for her life, her so-called rivalry with Alison exists mostly in her over-inventive mind. When Erica discovers that Alison�s life is far from perfect, she also realises that their similarities could be the start of a real friendship.