“Danny Deckchair”

By Harry Forbes
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) -- It's always gratifying to come across a small, modestly scaled film that turns out to be total delight from start to finish. And so it is with "Danny Deckchair" (Lions Gate), a bewitching Australian film by American Jeff Balsmeyer who, in his first-ever full-length feature, has created an engaging story in the vein of "magical realism" about overcoming one's limitations and exploring life's possibilities.

Danny Morgan (Rhys Ifans), a scruffy, bearded, lackadaisical cement worker, looks forward to an upcoming vacation with his live-in girlfriend Trudy (Justine Clarke) who, at the last minute, contrives to pull out of the trip by inventing a work-related excuse. In fact, she's engineered a date with smarmy newscaster Sandy Upman (Rhys Muldoon).

Danny discovers her deception, and as a sort of statement of independence, decides to rig a deck chair with helium balloons and elevate himself at a weekend barbecue, the first instance of some "Wizard of Oz" imagery with which Balsmeyer has delightfully peppered the film.

The stunt goes awry as the deck chair rises without Danny’s taking the scissors with which he had hoped to cut off the balloons for his descent. Instead he drifts into the clouds -- to the consternation of Trudy and their friends -- and ultimately crash-lands in a tree on the property of Glenda Lake (Miranda Otto), a spinsterish parking cop in the fictional town of Clarence many miles away.

In short order, he shaves his beard, adopts the guise of a professor, falls in love with Glenda under the disapproving glare of her policeman colleague and wins the affection of the townspeople.

Back home, the opportunistic Trudy basks in the new celebrity status that has been thrust on her, and blossoms in her own right, as a nationwide hunt for the missing Danny becomes front-page news, inspiring Aussies everywhere to embrace Danny's spontaneity. Somehow, the people of Clarence, themselves riveted by the story, never connect the charismatic professor with the missing man, as his picture seems never to be shown on television.

Ifans gives a superb performance, and his transformation in Clarence from unmotivated loafer to impassioned politician (not unlike Jimmy Stewart's character in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington") and lover, with a heightened sense of self-worth, is quite plausible in his accomplished hands. Otto and Clarke's respective changeovers are equally convincing.

And how splendid to have such a quality film that eschews any crude language and only the briefest of de rigueur sexual situations.

The film has the same feel as such modestly scaled human-interest films as "Calendar Girls," "The Full Monty," "Billy Elliott" and "Waking Ned Devine," and could have the same sleeper status at the box office.

This extraordinarily appealing and heartwarming story deserves to be a success. Because of implied sexual encounters, the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents are strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

* Forbes is director of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.