Even Better Than The Real Thing

A “Mad Fox Films” FILM
WRITTEN BY Andrew Todd

Quiet, earnest Rosie Tumutara graduates from drama school with dreams of stardom. But reality sets in as everyone from Auckland Premiere Theatre to the Papakura Human Statue Troupe rejects her, and she is forced to move into her disapproving parents’ laundry.

Rosie is almost ready to give up when a big-shot American movie producer arrives in town. She eagerly auditions with a heartfelt, bilingual monologue, but the producer only notices her body - and her lipstick moko. He introduces himself as porn baron Chuck Hornberg, offering Rosie a deal too good to refuse. She soon rockets to wealth and fame under the alias Princess Moko, making "authentic" Maori porn for clueless Americans - all the while trying to hide her new job from her parents!

A newly-minted superstar, Rosie leaps at the chance to model for an official Princess Moko love doll. She quickly falls for its sculptor, roguish Kiwi-mad immigrant Esteban, who is desperate to join the culture Rosie betrayed. But when they attempt to start a puppet-show company together, the increasingly jealous Hornberg threatens to deport Esteban back to Salvador and reveal Rosie’s dirty secret to her parents. Rosie must use all her classical training - and not-so-classical training - to outwit Hornberg, find love and success on her own terms, and move out of the laundry.

EVEN BETTER THAN THE REAL THING is a daring New Zealand comedy about culture, fame, and good old-fashioned porn.