Timothy Spanos's Moonlight & Magic suffers an identity crisis. Simulataneously, it attempts to grace the arenas of sly parody, heartfelt drama and experimental film with a bend of philosophical and political commentary. With a mash-up of this sort, it's necessary to thread the ideas together in somewhat unbreakable bonds, and sadly, here it's glued only loosely by an astoundingly grating theme song. At its groundlevel, it's a Humpty Dumpty film, one of too many parts, some of which though they work well, cannot keep the whole film together.

An Aussie homage to the iconic Bonnie & Clyde, the film follows the title characters Moonlight (Tim Burns) and Magic (Maxine Klibingaitis) as they generally wreck havoc countrywide by shoplifting and nipple clamping--think woman with large breasts versus multiple pairs of tongs. Ridiculous as they are, however, the pair are quite kind to one another and strangers they meet along the journey. One seemingly crazed accidental nudist Delvene (Dallas Palmer) and a breast cancer survivor Delilah (Reylene Pearce) both get taken underwing by the pair along the way. The quiet moments between outbursts of absurdity temper the film, conveying to the audience the idea that the film is really one about friendship.

It's unfortunate then that this message finds itself kicked by so many thematic kartwheels. The parody sections, particularly the one mocking the homoeroticism of the film's original, play out bland and overly-defined. The necessary kitsch to these sections is certainly on scene, but the talent to pull it off meaningfully remains wholly absent. The heartfelt drama works briefly and primarily on the ease of Klibingaitis' performance. During a monologue in which she talks about the household of domestic abuse she grew up in, Klibingaitis falls completely out of scene, the confines of the van the pair call home and into a place of some emotional honesty. These moments, however, are far too scattered to be memorable overall. Appropriately, while Klibingaitis holds up the dramatic sequences, Burns acts the pivot for the experimental sections. While at times didactic, his voice-overed monologues give some insight into the angst of his emotional landscape. Markedly though the element that Burns has down to a science throughout the film is in crafting moments of odd and intimate cruelty. There's a simulataneous sweetness and anger to his performance as Moonlight, which at specific points makes it intriguing to watch. When a young theif Leah (Jessica Illichmann) tries to rob him of hard-earned cash as a street performer--and a poor one at that--Moonlight lashes out by grabbing her knife and making the naive theif dance for her life. There's a childlike mean-spiritedness and injustice to the action but beneath that a compelling and mostly innocent sexual bend. It's these moments that the film shines in.

As unfocused as the film is stylistically, it isn't a bear to watch. There's a light-heartedness at times, some truly funny lines of dialogue and an overall feel of safety within the narrative. Spanos' was in the end trying to make a feel-good comedy, a piece of filmmaking that would leave a message with positive imprints, and Moonlight & Magic may very well have fully accomplished that had the pieces all worked together.