Opal Dream (2006)

"An exceptional family film...  Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
"A heartwarming family fable that parents and kids can enjoy.  V.A. Musetto, New York Post
"...quite touching, and it's a good choice for family viewing.  Walter Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle

Editor's Note Life in the Australian Outback is interesting, especially for Kellyanne Williamson, a little girl with the good fortune of having two imaginary friends. Kellyanne has endured much teasing due to these figments of her mind, but when her friends go missing, the whole town bands together to find them.

	Christian Byers
	Jacqueline McKenzie
	Sapphire Boyce
	Vince Colosimo
	Ben Rice - Based On Novella By
	Christian Henson - Original Music By
	Dario Marianelli - Original Music By
	Elisa Argenzio - Producer
	Elizabeth Mary Moore - Production Designer
	Finola Dwyer - Executive Producer
	Jim Clark - Editor
	Nell Hanson - Art Director
	Peter Cattaneo - Director
	Peter Cattaneo - Screenplay
	Phil Traill - Screenplay
	Robert Humphreys - Cinematographer

Variety 7 of 10
From the first frames, when lollypops are offered to the camera, there's no escaping the saccharine miasma of whimsy enveloping Peter Cattaneo's "Opal Dream." Based on an acclaimed novella first published in Grantamagazine, the pic jettisons the story's adult flavor for a strictly cotton candy diet, investing its nine-year-old protag with a cutesy fantasy life that in the real world would be grounds for therapy...Where the "Pobby and Dingan" novella was much praised for its richly evoked landscape, Cattaneo and d.p. Robert Humphreys fail to make the eerie, semi-lunar terrain an ever-present character. Sound is occasionally positioned too far forward, and music, while generally avoiding violin swells, manages to make plucked guitars equally schmaltzy. - Jay Weissberg

Chicago Tribune 8 of 10
If transported to another setting, "Opal Dream" could easily be Southern Gothic, a family drama lush with eccentricity, offbeat humor, oddball whimsy and whispers of madness...But instead of the southern U.S., it is set and filmed in southern Australia, with a look and feel more reminiscent of a spaghetti western than early Truman Capote...It's a deliberately quirky film made more real by its frontier, desert-town atmosphere...There's a predictability and inevitable sweetness to the denouement, a familiar movie rallying cry for the unseen, the dreamer and the different drummer. But director Peter Cattaneo ("The Full Monty") also unfolds everything with a lean, crystalline detachment, supervising a cast who make the story human, believable, and moving..."Opal Dream" is a worthwhile family film, graced with an ambivalent, bittersweet ending and just the right touch of cinematic poetry turning on the gemstone in its title. - Sid Smith