Paper Planes

It’s heartening to see a good Aussie film about something as pure and old-fashioned as making the perfect paper plane. In the school holidays, we’re usually so inundated with hyperactive American product that spares no budget so it would be great if local audiences got behind Paper Planes and gave it the box office returns it deserves.

Writer/director/producer Robert Connolly (The Bank, Three Dollars, Balibo, Underground: The Julian Assange Story) co-wrote with Steve Worland (Bootmen) the script about young Dylan (Ed Oxenbould), a boy who discovers he has a talent for making paper planes and enters a national competition. 

Dylan and his dad, Jack (Sam Worthington - Avatar), live on a property in the Western Australian outback, and it’s obvious that Jack doesn’t have much zest for life, spending most of it lying on the couch in front of the TV. We learn that Dylan’s mum died five months earlier and that Jack is in the depths of depression, so the chance to put his mind to the Australian Junior Championships in Sydney is just what Dylan needs. It’s added value that Dylan’s mum was the one who showed him how to fold the planes so that they flew well. 

Other people in Dylan’s life are his cheeky grandad (Terry Norris), who escapes the nursing home where he lives and takes Dylan on an adventure at an aeroplane museum (imaginatively shot complete with a black and white fantasy sequence), and his encouraging teacher played by Kath and Kim’s Peter Rowsthorn.

Things really start to heat up when Dylan makes it into the World Championships in Japan, and with the help of his friends and family manages to raise enough cash to get him on the plane. Also in the competition is the cute Japanese champ, Kimi (Ena Imai), who does a few cartwheels before throwing her planes, and bad sport, Jason (Nicholas Bakopoulos-Cooke) – a weaker link in the story because of his one-dimensional ‘bad guy’ attitude, despite his champion golfer dad (David Wenham) seeming to be quite a nice person. Another character is a quirky former paper plane champ, played by Deborah Mailman.

A few weaknesses aside, Paper Planes makes for generally very enjoyable viewing, and has the expected uplifting ending you’d expect for a family film. As usual, Ed Oxenbould shows that he’s a young star in the making (he was in Channel 10’s Puberty Blues and the currently screening U.S. film, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day). 

by Vicki Englund