Shane McRae, a real-life mate of Joffa's and a carpenter by trade, makes his silver screen debut as the crazed Collingwood fan's disaster-prone offsider.

"I play the co-star, I s'pose you would say," he said.

"We start a gardening-cum-labouring type of business but things sort of end up in disaster. We have a knack of finding trouble."

The fledgling business, J & S Labour Force, is cheap to hire but the pair's incompetence makes for hilarious shenanigans at building sites in Melbourne, Drouin and Tynong.

"We do a bit of gardening work for the church of Father Bob Maguire. We do some things he is not too happy about and get booted off the church grounds."

The pair wind up travelling to Glasgow in Joffa's quest for his holy grail: Celtic Park, home of Celtic Football Club.

There, they make Joffa's dream a reality and sort out some friendship dilemmas along the way.

"It's a journey about a couple of blokes who are not the smartest in the world, a couple of underdogs, but in their own way they make it and get to the other side of the world."

McRae is at pains to point out that the movie is not all about Collingwood - "there's only a little bit of Collingwood stuff in it" - and says the movie has surprised audiences with its humour.

"There is a lot of laughter in there. We had a test two months ago and the audience was really laughing hard."

People would get to see many of "the truths of Joffa's life", and less well known sides to him, such as his involvement with the AFL program for the underprivileged, RecLink.

The film took two years to complete and was done on a shoestring, $100,000 budget, but the pair had a ball making it, McRae said.

"It was a real blast, to be honest."

Joffa The Movie will screen at all Palace theatres from September 2.