Middle Age Spread

Well here's to a night of wit and reason.

– Colin (Grant Tilly) on the evening things come unstuck

All your jogging doesn't seem to have done much good.

– Elizabeth (Dorothy McKegg) to her husband Colin (Grant Tilly)

Middle Age Spread is a comedy of bad manners. It's very simple. A modest film.

– Director John Reid in The Sunday Times, 1 July 1979

Middle Age Spread, I believe, will prove to be very much a performance film — an actor's film, if you like. The original script, naturally, concentrates on dialogue ... In adapting the play, we turned the original 10 scenes into something like 54 scenes. Instead of having people talk all the time, we have visualised a lot of the original dialogue. But I believe we have remained faithful to the play's ideas.

– Director John Reid in Art New Zealand, issue 13, Spring 1979

Well we don't talk much, except who's got the car keys, things like that. I mean we know each others opinions on everything by now.

– Colin (Grant Tilly) describes the state of his marriage

How can you know Hungarian life so well?

– Hungarian director István Szabó (Mephisto) after seeing Middle Age Spread at the Sydney Film Festival

Keep Reg off the Scotch.

– Elizabeth (Dorothy McKegg) as they prepare for the dinner party

...[Grant Tilly] captures completely the gentle susceptibility and momentarily disturbed soundheadedness of Colin in the manner of an antipodian Woody Allen. With his expertise, the film cannot fail.

– Variety reviewer Mike Nicolaidi on Grant Tilly's performance in Middle Age Spread, 31 December 1978

Keith Aberdein's fine screenplay from the Roger Hall stage hit ... keeps in place all the wry humour, and gentle sadness, of the original ...[the film] proves to contain the most satisfying content of any NZ feature film made during the current production upsurge ... Middle Age Spread is no mere parading of middle class morality. Wit and thoughtfulness are judiciously mixed.

– Variety reviewer Mike Nicolaidi, 31 December 1978

Middle Age Spread ran for eight weeks in the Wintergarden in the basement of Auckland's grand old Civic Theatre and seven at the Lido in Wellington.

– Lindsay Shelton, in his 2005 book The Selling of New Zealand Movies, page 32

..a funny, yet poignantly honest movie ... This is a thinking movie, but mostly provides a good laugh.

– Writer Felicity Anderson in The Auckland Star, 22 June 1979, page 7

Grant Tilly's Colin remains one of the most memorable performances in New Zealand cinema ... we warm to the endearing, half-humorous physicality with which the character is presented ... Colin may be the most sympathetic character simply because he reflects the flabby, unheroic everyday.

– Nicholas Reid on the central character of Colin, in 1986 book A Decade of New Zealand Film - Sleeping Dogs to Came a Hot Friday, page 50

We received an initial pre-production grant from the Interim Film Commission, and then Barney [producer John Barnett] put the rest of the deal together. This involved one major private investor. TV Two also has a small interest; and various contras were arranged ... It was a four-week shoot — 22 shooting days — all in Auckland. It is a low budget feature and the Film Commission has no investment, as such, above its pre-production grant. ... We felt that we would get the money back, if it does the average business of other local features already released in the country.

– Director John Reid describes the movie's intentionally "B-grade budget", Art New Zealand, issue 13, Spring 1979

Middle Age Spread centres on a dinner party at Colin's home where three couples joke and exchange bitcheries. Colin's affair with Judy ... is now a source of constraint and embarrassment for Colin — something to be hidden under the manners of a genial host and good fellow. But it will be revealed.

– Nicholas Reid, in his 1986 book A Decade of New Zealand Film - Sleeping Dogs to Came a Hot Friday, page 49

When I first saw Roger Hall's play I felt it could not be bettered. Now it seems to have crystallised in transition to the screen ... Grant Tilly juggles with comedy and drama so deftly that you can hardly tell tother from which. His performance is superb ... Director John Reid can take pride in the movie — his first feature after many notable documentaries for both screens, besides fine acting in many roles.

– Dominion reviewer Catherine de la Roche, who named the film one of the ten best of 1979, quoted from her 1988 book Performance, page 220

Reg, in his kneejerk reactions to all the conservative pieties, has the lion's share of the film's wisecracks. The most quoted lines from Middle Age Spread, the ones that rouse greatest audience laughter, tend to be Reg's attacks on Jaycees and team sports, chic overseas travel and neighbourhood gossip.

– Nicholas Reid on the character of Reg (Australian actor Peter Sumner), in his 1986 book A Decade of New Zealand Film - Sleeping Dogs to Came a Hot Friday, page 51

Middle Age Spread brings together six relatively articulate characters, clearly defined in their social roles and values. The ageing conventionalist; the outspoken cynic; the conservative professional; the housebound wives, and the half-liberated woman. The concept is theatrical and the film's origins in live theatre are not always happily disguised.

– Nicholas Reid in his 1986 book A Decade of New Zealand Film - Sleeping Dogs to Came a Hot Friday, page 52

Like [Australian movie] Don's Party, Middle Age Spread reflects a time when suburbia's would-be left intelligentsia is feeling its impotence, and resigning itself to a useless role as permanent opposition.

– Nicholas Reid on the Labour-leaning characters in the film, in 1986 book A Decade of New Zealand Film - Sleeping Dogs to Came a Hot Friday, page 56

What we do now, Elizabeth, is the dishes.

– Colin (Grant Tilly) delivers one of the most famous lines in the film

The story plumbs no great depths. Character development is adequate for the purpose of comedy, and sombre subjects like adultery and abortion are used as story devices rather than explored as subjects for serious discussion.

– Hutt News reviewer Peter Bates, 3 July 1979