Laura Michelle Kelly – who recently played Mary Poppins to great applause on the London West End stage – now stars in this Australian musical comedy, a film with the weirdly bland over-eagerness of a copy of Take a Break, based on a one-woman show called Sink Songs by cabaret performer Joanna Weinberg. Kelly is Elspeth, a former pub singer turned stay-at-home mum of two, whose dishy oceanographer husband James (Ronan Keating) is always off improbably studying whales for months at a time. Lonely Elspeth sings her songs to a webcam, naturally becomes an overnight YouTube star and gets courted by a media megacorporation.

While James is away, the bright lights of Sydney almost turn her head and soon her relationship is in crisis. The actual musical interludes themselves have some sprightliness, but the dialogue between the songs is desperately strained and implausible, with kids-TV acting. The housewife-superstar routine inevitably brings to mind the great Barry Humphries, whose raucous, subversive humour makes this look tame and lame.