Director Elliott noted that the audiences viewing the film in Australia, the United States, and France all reacted to it differently, going on to state that "At a screening we had for an Australian audience, they laughed at all the Aussieisms. The Americans laughed too, but at different jokes. There is a line where Tick says, 'Bernadette has left her cake out in the rain...' French audience didn't get it, whereas the Americans laughed for ten minutes." Tom O'Regan, a scholar of film studies, remarked that the film actually carried different meanings for members of different nationalities and subcultural groups, with LGBT Americans believing that the film was "the big one that will bring gay lifestyles into the mainstream", while Australians tended to "embrace it as just another successful Australian film".