52 Films by Women Vol 9. 49. Kangaroo (Director: Kate Woods)

 

Pictured: Room for one more? Charlie (Lily Whiteley, right) brings disgraced former weatherman, Chris (Ryan Corr) another young kangaroo in the family-friendly Australian film, 'Kangaroo', written by Harry Cripps and directed by Kate Woods. Still courtesy of StudioCanal.

There was a time when films featured real animals, trained to do endearing stuff on camera. They might be replaced by a puppet or an animatronic model – especially if the animal in question was a great white shark, there’s no telling them what to do - but we could find ourselves falling in love with the cute St. Bernard dog, Siamese cat or indeed Champion the Wonder Horse, whom I imagine was portrayed (if that’s the right verb) by more than one stallion. Then came computer generated imagery – CGI – and it changed everything. Now raccoons, Peruvian bears, cats and dogs can be rendered digitally to a high degree of verisimilitude, except that they stand on hind legs and sound like Bradley Cooper, Ben Whishaw and Alec Baldwin. In movies featuring ‘voice talents’, which is a strange term because in this instance talent means recognition and not a particularly skilful way of speaking, you think about the actor as much as the digital rendering. For all that trained animals were saved from abuse – cruel techniques that were employed to encourage them to perform on cue – the movies lost fluffy cuteness. One of the reasons that Marmaduke was a commercial hit was that the titular dog was played by two Great Danes, George and Spirit.

If it had been made thirty years ago, the Australian feel-good family comedy Kangaroo would have featured real kangaroos, just as Crocodile Dundee featured a real Paul Hogan. Digital effects have expanded what can be shown. At the start of the film, directed by Kate Woods from a screenplay by Harry Cripps, we see a First Nations girl, Charlie (Lily Whiteley) place her palm on cracked earth, arch her foot and race alongside a dozen kangaroos. Move over ‘Dances With Wolves’, this is ‘running next to marsupials.’ Not only does the scene look fake – the kangaroos don’t acknowledge her presence – but there’s no finish line. The opening establishes Charlie’s happy place amongst kangaroos. She allows young ones to enter her room, though they can’t be much help with her homework, which partially accounts for her skipping school. Note to filmmakers: that’s not what ‘Skippy the Bush Kangaroo’ was about. Charlie’s father has recently passed away. He was all about the ‘roos, especially in his art, which his widow, Rosie (Deborah Mailman) proudly displays, next to a sign, ‘not for sale’. Rosie and Charlie live in Silver Gum, a small town in Alice Springs, population 150 (are they sure?), having moved there from the city to be close to Rosie’s family. What about Charlie’s father’s family? Did they have a say? Charlie misses both her father and the city and won’t make friends with the local kids, even though she can kick a football farther than most of them; running with kangaroos does wonders for your core.

Charlie is only one half of the story. Meet self-centred TV weatherman, Chris Masterman (Ryan Corr). He has the default setting of condescension as he interviews a team of lifeguards at Bondi Beach and gets water poured all over him – his idea, apparently. Chris wants to be noticed in order that he can secure a position as news anchor, though I’m not sure it’s wise to pour water over a man at a desk. His boss, Liz (Brooke Satchwell) encourages him in his delusion. However, when Chris wades into the water to rescue what he thinks is a stranded dolphin, his ‘act of bravery’ backfires. The dolphin was unwell and resting. Sent back out to sea, it was found washed up dead on the beach the next day. The dolphin is not the only thing washed up. The social media backlash forces the TV station to fire Chris. Amazingly, he secures another job. Apparently there is a TV channel that attracts people with little intelligence and poor judgment. In the UK, it’s GB News. Chris has to travel over 2,400 kilometres to Broome (in his red convertible, unhelpfully graffitied but subsequently resprayed) to meet his new employer.

Pictured: Can someone rid me of this appealingly cute kangaroo? Disgraced ex-TV weatherman Chris (Ryan Corr) finds himself trapped in Silver Gum in the Australian family-friendly film, 'Kangaroo', written by Harry Cripps and directed by Kate Woods. Still courtesy of StudioCanal.

What follows isn’t a road movie. I don’t know which of Christopher Booker’s seven basic plots covers ‘man stranded in a remote town discovers his place in the world’, but Cripps’ script, supplemented by contributions from writers Peta-Lee Cole Manolis, Danielle Maclean and Melina Marchetta, the latter having penned Kate Woods’ first film as director, Looking for Alibrandi, released in 2000, sticks to the template.  Googled it: it’s number seven, ‘rebirth’. Chris stops at Silver Gum for lunch, making the faux pas of photographing himself in the town’s only bar-restaurant-guest house, seemingly mocking the Cordon Bleu sign on the wall. ‘You think a bar here can’t reach Cordon Bleu standards?’ asks stern bar owner Jesse (Rachel House), offering him water pumped from Iceland (unlikely, but it’s what he asked for) and a ham sandwich – ‘we don’t do salad’ – because she has no patience for his type. Chris leaves in a grumpy mood, shooing away the local kids who have gathered around his car. No sooner does he leave Silver Gum than he reaches for a water bottle and takes his eye off the road, hitting a kangaroo and causing his car to crash. He is watched by Charlie, who is also leaving town after a row with her mother. Chris inspects the fatally injured kangaroo, who gives birth in his arms – one of the sequences impossible to stage without CGI. Cradling the new born joey, Chris walks back to town to find someone to take care of it. He discovers that the ‘someone’ is him.

One critic described Kangaroo as hard to dislike, but if you really put your mind to something… Still, I understand the sentiment. Woods and the writers work to keep the audience interested, casting Charlie’s grandparents (Ernie Dingo, Trisha Morton-Thomas) as Chris’ saviours, telling him that his car will take a week to repair and offering him a ‘guest house’ in which to stay, which turns out to be a storage hut with no inside bathroom. When you need to go, step outside and bring the loo paper and shovel with you. You want a shower - wait until it rains. This happens early on. Frightened, the new-born joey jumps into Chris’ makeshift bed. After initially rejecting it, Chris tucks the joey in. This scene that would warm us to him if the joey wasn’t so obviously computer generated.

Pictured: Don't forget to wash behind your ears. Chris (Ryan Corr) takes an outdoor bath with a young kangaroo in the Australian family-friendly film, 'Kangaroo', written by Harry Cripps and directed by Kate Woods. Still courtesy of StudioCanal.

Chris is visited by Rosie. ‘My daughter comes here,’ she tells him. ‘I want to see what you’re like.’ We wonder if a former weatherman who looks forty - ‘I’m thirty-five’ – and a First Nations widow with nice earrings and an art gallery will get together, but that’s not the point of the film. Using a formula milk substitute helpfully prepared by Charlie, Chris keeps the young joey in good health. Then he discovers that the distributor cap on his car has gone missing. Chris won’t be able to leave town for another three weeks.

In the meantime, Rosie offers Chris a lift to Alice Springs, where he discovers that there is no animal shelter for kangaroos. ‘They’re not an endangered species,’ he is told. He even pops into a butcher’s shop, where a sign tells us that kangaroo meat sells for $2.99 a pound. Making the best of his life with the joey, he is aided by Charlie who fills his shopping basket with oils and the like. Chris takes a job driving the tour bus. In one scene, he stops the bus, having spotted a man standing over a wounded kangaroo, threatening to gut it for meat, and intervenes. ‘There are children watching,’ he says twice. This time, Chris’ attempt at heroism doesn’t backfire on him, though the grumpy man threatens revenge.

The best scene in the film features a boat race. How can you have one of those in the outback? Just because you can’t have something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. The boats are decorated boxes with no bottoms carried by a team of runners who wear outfits that signify their team. The teams run inside the boxes – this time, there is a finish line – and the whole town takes part. Chris and his team race ahead, but as they approach the finish line, Charlie stages a planned intervention – very Charlie – crossing the race path with young kangaroos. This gives the team of older women a chance to take the lead and win the race. Bernadette (Geneviève Lemon, the star of Jane Campion’s debut film, Sweetie) leads the oldies. The set piece defines the phrase ‘hard to dislike’, proving the cliché, it’s not the winning but the taking part.

Charlie brings Chris more kangaroos to care for. Chris tells her that he knows that she stole his distributor cap. He pays twenty dollars to a local kid to borrow her phone to ring the TV station in Broome, and another twenty bucks to ring his ex-boss, Liz.

It should be no surprise that the community warms to Chris and comes to his aid when the grumpy man who threatened to kill a kangaroo arrives near Chris’ make-shift sanctuary. Chris unexpectedly goes viral on social media, then Liz pays him a visit with an offer of employment.

Pictured: From the studio that brought you 'Paddington', some product placement. Disgraced ex-TV weatherman Chris (Ryan Corr) models a Paddington Bear-theme baby sling in the Australian family-friendly film, 'Kangaroo', written by Harry Cripps and directed by Kate Woods. Still courtesy of StudioCanal.

A caption at the beginning of the film tells us that is ‘inspired by a true story’. For a long while, we wonder what that story might be: a man who uses a baby sling for kangaroos? The inspiration is Chris ‘Brolga’ Barns, who founded the Kangaroo Sanctuary in 2011. Woods and her team hide the inspiration in a broadly by-the-numbers redemption arc.

The Saturday midday screening I attended was sparsely attended. Even though Kangaroo is heavily reliant on CGI, audiences weren’t fooled by the advertising, ‘from the studio that brought you Paddington’. I agree that the film is diverting entertainment. It features strong women and a message that you’re never too old – thirty-five – to find your true calling. Commercially (according to Box Office Mojo), the film has performed as well in Germany as it has done in Australia, earning over $2 million in each. This worst scene has Chris take care of an adult kangaroo, who fights him in a tall metal enclosure. The computer-enhanced biceps on the kangaroo made me groan. The second-best scene features children being helped with their homework. Cities have the internet. Silver Gum has an old bloke at a bar who considers the question, ‘Macbeth: villain or victim?’ ‘A Rhodes scholar,’ Jesse explains.

Reviewed at Screen Four, Cineworld Dover, Kent, England, Saturday 31 January 2026, 12:30 screening