Yahoo Serious is very much a like him or hate him director. Young Einstein was regarded likeably by many but Serious’s quirkily individualistic humour failed to translate particularly well across the Pacific, with the film receiving poor reviews in the US and American audiences simply not getting it. And subsequently neither Reckless Kelly nor Mr. Accident did much business outside of Australasia. Yahoo Serious specializes in a kind of hysteric slapstick surrealism. His work suggests something of the visual slapstick of a Buster Keaton or a Charlie Chaplin combined with the kitsch silliness of a Pee-Wee Herman. However his films often seem funnier to read about than they do in actuality. Watching them, they tend to bring an amused smile rather than an uproarious laughter. Even when making crude, not very funny innuendos, Serious’s films often have a childlike innocence to them.

Here Serious throws up some giddily surreal slapstick sequences – the opening scene in his apartment where everything goes wrong with water pipes exploding, he placing his iron on his ear thinking it a telephone, electrically shocking himself, and the vacuum cleaner accidentally becoming a flamethrower as he tries to put a burning curtain out; or the sequence where he is pursued down several flights of stairs by hundreds of tumbling trashcans. There’s the oddly amusing sight gag, like the image of the Sydney Opera House having been replaced with giant eggs. But as a whole Mr. Accident, as indeed is the case with Yahoo Serious’s other films, is a little too scattershot and unfocused in its humour. The final gag where the hubcap finally does take off into orbit is rather predictable.