Dir: Kate Woods | Ryan Corr, Lily Whitely, deborah Maiman | Aus Drama 107’
It’s difficult to contemplate the sheer vastness of Australia, but you don’t have to sit in a plane for 24 hours to do so. Experience the wonder of the country and its wildlife from close quarters in this feel good feature from director Kate Wood.
After a brief glimpse of Sydney harbour with its soaring skyscrapers the story travels to the Northern Territory with its scalding skies and sun-baked terracotta landscapes where we meet one of Australia’s iconic natives, the kangeroo. These indigenous two-legged beasts bound freely through the outback, and seeing a little joey pop out of its mother pouch is just the most breathtaking experience.
Up North we meet Chris Masterman (Ryan Corr), who is searching for a new beginning on the other side of Australia having been sacked from his TV job in Sydney after a botched attempt to rescue a dolphin causes a media backlash.
Chris fetches up in a remote village in the outback where his car collides with a female kangaroo leaving her baby motherless and further dinting the reporter’s media popularity amongst the locals who quickly recognise him from the TV dolphin disaster.
Desperately looking for help to repair his car and care for the baby joey Chris encounters a young Indigenous girl named Charlie (Lily Whiteley) who has lost her own father, and through her own grieving has developed a special connection with the kangaroos. She teaches Chris to look after the joey, and develop his own caring side.
Chris does become a more humane man with quite a few baby kangaroos under his care. And when he rescues a captured kangaroo, later called Roger, from the men who are cruelly trying to kill it, he finally redeems himself on social media. Liz, his former boss, then turns up to make him an offer he can’t refuse, and Chris must choose between his newfound family and sense of purpose and the dream he has always persued.
Once again, it is Charlie who shows him the real meaning of his existence, and how dreams can change and evolve. Kangaroo serves as both a travelogue and a rites of passage drama. Chris’s humanisation is a gradual process enabled by the vulnerability of the joey. But it’s Charlie, played sensitively by Lily Whiteley, who learns from her own experience of grief to channel understanding into the plight of the local wildlife.
Chris’s own personal evolvement is not as profound or convincing as Charlie’s, robbing the film of its potential emotional impact in the final act. But this impressively captured drama is enjoyable nonetheless with its magnificent widescreen images. But the joeys are ultimately the real stars of the show.
IN UK CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY