Film lovers have voted for their favourite Australian movie of all time – and the winner is going straight to the pool room.
The Castle, made in Melbourne by Working Dog and directed by Rob Sitch, has come out on top of a reader poll in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
At first glance, this is no surprise: any film that yields a slew of phrases still in popular use almost three decades after its debut (“Tell him he’s dreaming”, “How’s the serenity”, “It’s the vibe”, “You little ripper!”) was bound to perform strongly.
Yet the enduring appeal of 1997’s The Castle – a David and Goliath battle between the Kerrigan family and a greedy consortium attempting to “compulsory acquire” their home – reflects the fact it is both of its time and timeless.
At one level, it’s a snapshot of mid-’90s, working class Australia: rissoles and steamed veggies for dinner; Copperart decor and Franklin Mint collectibles; and a driveway housing a Camira, a Torana, a Commodore and a Cortina.
Back then, millions of Aussies really did sit down and watch whatever was on the telly at 7.30pm.
Patriarch Darryl Kerrigan (Michael Caton) adores The Best of Hey Hey It’s Saturday; his wife, Sal (Anne Tenney) is fond of floral windcheaters and DIY craft projects; and their daughter Tracey (Sophie Lee) once reached the dizzy heights of fame as a contestant on The Price Is Right.
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The film is densely layered with visual gags: Tracey and her husband Con (Eric Bana) walking back to the Kerrigan’s airport-adjacent home after their honeymoon in Thailand; Darryl serving up a plate of cremated steaks while asking “who ordered medium rare?”; the mozzie zapper working overtime as the Kerrigans imbibe the “serenity” of their modest holiday home in Bonnie Doon.
The Castle’s status as Australians’ most beloved film was revealed when The Age and Herald published their list of the top 50 Australian movies last week.
The project – a highly immersive journey through our cinematic history – had been months in the making.
Led by Age Spectrum editor Lindy Percival and the visual stories team, it quickly became one of this year’s most-read culture stories.
A panel of 24 experts ranked the films, placing Warwick Thornton’s magnificent debut feature, Samson & Delilah, at No. 1.
But a custom-built tool, allowing subscribers to award a “thumbs up” to as many movies as they wished, saw The Castle claim the popular vote.
The poll – in which more than 15,000 votes have been cast so far – currently has The Castle exceeding 2000 votes, followed by Gallipoli (1800 votes), Muriel’s Wedding (1500), Strictly Ballroom (1500) and another Working Dog film, The Dish (1400).
Although The Castle achieved significant commercial success in cinemas, it cemented its place as a classic through word-of-mouth reviews that helped drive VHS rentals, DVD sales and regular screenings on Channel Nine.
Now, it can be streamed on Stan. (Nine is the owner of Stan and this publication.)
Nostalgia is partly responsible for The Castle’s support among Age and Herald subscribers, as is its warm-hearted tone.
But these aren’t the only reasons for its perennial popularity.Its central storyline – an obscenely powerful entity enriching itself while pretending the social and economic carnage it creates is for the greater good – hardly feels less relevant in 2026.
Still, The Castle was never intended to be a treatise on inequality. First and foremost, it set out to make audiences laugh.
This might seem like a bleedingly obvious goal for a comedy, but not every reviewer was amused.
One complained that The Castle earned its laughs “the wrong way: by making Darryl and his family into figures of fun”.
Others also accused the creators of sneering at their characters.
These are peculiar criticisms, not least because the writers drew heavily upon their own families. Suburban solicitor Dennis Denuto (Tiriel Mora) was based partly on Santo Cilauro’s father, while director Rob Sitch told a panel discussion in 2025 that one of Darryl’s most famous lines came from his dad, who would compliment his wife’s cooking by dropping his cutlery and asking, “Why would you go to a restaurant?”
Even the location of the Kerrigans’ home was inspired by a fond memory from Sitch’s childhood.
“My cousins lived near that airport [in the film] and we would run to the end of the runway every time we visited,” Sitch wrote in The Age and Herald.
“I still remember thinking that it was the best place to live in the world. Imagine getting to watch jetliners land outside your bedroom window every day. Then I grew up and it became a funny anecdote.”
As Cilauro once said, “I like the fact that the film is simple: here it is, and there’s nothing more complicated than that. You either take it or you don’t take it.”
Or as Gleisner has put it, “We [Working Dog] have set out to make broad, mainstream, enjoyable feel-good films, and that is so easily derided by people whose life’s work is about making dark, brooding, angst-ridden think-pieces.”
As a satire, The Castle gently ribs its subjects instead of savaging them. And it’s not exactly rare for filmmakers to use exaggeration for comic effect.
Virtually every character – from the pompous corporate lawyers and kindly QC Lawrence Hammill (Bud Tingwell) to Lebanese neighbour Farouk (Costas Kilias) and Tracey’s Greek in-laws – are broadly sketched.
Even so, they each reveal some basic truth about life, which gives the film its emotional heft.The fact that Age and Herald readers voted The Castle Australia’s favourite movie is cause for hope.
It suggests that in an increasingly humourless and censorious world, a decent chunk of us retain that most admirable of Aussie traits: the ability to laugh at ourselves.
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