Bosch & Rockit review – a sentimental and cheesy Byron Bay drama

Having amassed bad debts and upset the wrong people, a protagonist with a habit of making poor decisions goes on the run and relocates to a small town, hoping to start afresh – until the past inevitably catches up. This evergreen story trajectory is once again rehashed, in Tyler Atkins’ cloying and sometimes flat-out cheesy film Bosch & Rockit. Opening with the words “inspired by true events”, Atkins goes on to demonstrate why these words tend to mean very little: a well-crafted, entirely fictitious feature can feel much more plausible than a goofily executed one – like Bosch & Rockit – claiming some connection to reality.

Early in the runtime the titular father (Bosch) and son (Rockit), played by Luke Hemsworth and Rasmus King, hit the beach, catching waves in a tender scene bathed in dawn’s early light, piano keys and stringed instruments providing soft orchestral accompaniment. As if the moment weren’t idyllic enough, Atkins cuts to a school of dolphins in the water, swimming in unison.

Related: 6 Festivals review – schmaltzy coming-of-age drama goes for the heartstrings

Right after this … the shark attacks! Just kidding; that’s a different movie and one I might have enjoyed more. And, yes, I made this exact same joke (except it involved a crocodile instead of a shark) in my review of the coming-of-age drama 6 Festivals, which also stars King. My intention isn’t to repeat myself but to make a link between the gooey sentimentality in both films. King is a vibrant presence with great potential, and a preternatural ability to appear healthy despite being exposed to dangerous amounts of cheese. The faults in both these films aren’t his – and the same can be said of Hemsworth, who won’t be winning any acting awards as Bosch but is still convincing as a thickheaded and selfish, yet rascally blokey bloke.

While 6 Festivals is consistently wishy-washy, some of the dialogue exchanges in Bosch & Rockit feel as though they belong in different movies. Sometimes the characters speak as though they might be relatives of Johnny “Spit” Spitieri from Gettin’ Square. In one scene Bosch cuts himself and exclaims, “Oh, you fuckin’ cunt!” Young Rockit hears him and spits back: “Oy, cunt, watch ya fuckin’ tongue!”

At other times, the dialogue is closer to the tone of Nicholas Sparks. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes but you’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” Bosch tells his son in one scene. In another, Rockit explains where his name comes from by stating “My dad likes to say it’s because I’m out of this world.” Cringe.

Bosch is a drug dealer and surfer who leaves town, Rockit in tow, when a bushfire hits his property and he loses his stash. The pair’s relocation to Byron Bay is a significant event in their lives but there’s little sense of stakes, and to the audience it feels as though the film is merely exchanging one picturesque coastal location for another.

Atkins uses these settings as pretty scaffolding for otherwise ordinary scenes – such as Rockit eating hot chips with a love interest named Ash-Ash (Savannah La Rain). Immediately afterwards, Atkins cuts to a pair of whales majestically turning in the water. The director lays it on thick, in other words. But it gets worse: the young pair continue talking until dusk, beneath an orange-pink sky, with Ash-Ash delivering a sad speech about never meeting her father and how her biological mother “got really sick and couldn’t take care of me”.

At this point, having been exposed to so many dolphins and whales, and all that dewy-eyed dialogue, I thought I could no longer be surprised by this film’s cheesiness. I was wrong. The scene ends with Rockit asking Ash-Ash to “stay a little longer — just ’til we catch a shooting star”.

• Bosch & Rockit is in cinemas around Australia now