I'm dumbfounded that P.J. Hogan, whose "Muriel's Wedding" was so sweet and charming, has directed the loathsome lost-in-translation Aussie comedy "Mental," about a family of wackos (or are they?) saved from the bin by a homily-spewing hitchhiker (Toni Collette). "Mental" is tawdry and trashy, with a cheap, oversaturated look and nobody to like or to laugh at or with. Collette, Liev Schreiber as a shark hunter (?!), and Anthony LaPaglia as the preoccupied patriarch will all want to edit this insta-bomb out of their career retrospectives.
