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October 17, 7:37 PMPhiladelphia Movie ExaminerWilliam Sternman

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Here we go again.

Another movie that feels compelled to reassure you right from the start that it is based on true events.

Reassure you? Yes, because if you didn't know right from the start that it was real, how could you possibly know how to react to it? You would have to fall back on what Ernest Hemingway once described as your own “built-in, shockproof crap detector.” After years of watching TV reality shows that have nothing to do with reality and war coverage that spares you the sight of dead bodies—or even their coffins—how can you possibly know what is really real?

Unless you're told right from the start.

Then you know for sure–and don't have to go through the painful process of thinking for yourself. And you have to believe it because, well, how can you not believe the truth?

The fallacy here (aside from the insult to your intelligence) is that a fictional movie doesn't have to be real–it has to seem real. It's a truism that if a screenwriter reproduced the way people actually speak–with all their hesitations, changes of subject, meandering off subject, incoherence–you'd be bored to death. The trick is to make up conversation that seems real while at the same time engages your mind and emotions.

Australian director Scott Hicks (Shine), working from Allan Cubitt's adaptation of Simon Carr's novel (talk about reality!), takes you on a whirlwind SUV tour of his homeland in the hope that you won't realize that none of his characters is a fully developed individual. Joe Warr (Clive Owens) is an Aussie sportcaster whose wife (Laura Fraser) dies unexpectedly (although she keeps coming back like an ear worm; “Ghost of a Chance,” anybody?) leaving him to bring up their six-year-old son (Nicholas McAnulty) all by himself. What better way than to whiz around the beautiful South Australia countryside (another distraction from the film's sketchy storyline)?

As if this weren't enough, he tears off to England to bring his resentful 14-year-old son from a previous marriage (George MacKay) Down Under.

There's enough material here for two or three movies. The relationship between the devil-may-care father and his equally helter-skelter little boy (who Dad calls “sweetheart”; paging Siggie Freud). The relationship between Dad and his teenage son, who can't forgive him for abandoning him to an uncaring mother. There's even the hint of a romance with a scrappy parent at the school his little boy attends (Emma Booth). Also left unexplored is the relationship between Dad and his down-to-earth mother-in-law (Julia Blake).

The actors do what they can with what they've been given. (McKay and Blake are particularly good.) The scenery is great. But the movie as a whole is more like a travelogue occasionally interrupted by the antics of those intrusive waving tourists.