Kangaroo has promising ingredients: a Sydney TV weather reporter accustomed to soft city life is forced to reconsider his priorities (what, no sparkling Icelandic water or spa treatments?) when stranded in the Outback. Cuddly joeys abound and there’s plenty of silliness and slapstick - a boat race in the desert, for example - as well as a muscular boxing kangaroo called Roger (CGI is involved here). Animal-loving eight-year-olds may go for it.
Chris Masterman (Ryan Corr; House of the Dragon) is desperate to find fame and host his own show. His moment comes when he rescues a baby dolphin that’s languishing in the shallows on Bondi beach. The TV crew records him jumping fully clothed into the water and pushing the dolphin out to sea. Unfortunately, the dolphin dies the next day – it was sick and wanted to rest – and Masterman is cancelled, fired and branded an animal killer.
Kate Woods’s warm-hearted family comedy features dramatic vistas of the Northern Territory – it’s set near Alice Springs, though “near” is maybe pushing it in a land this vast. Cynical adult Poms may find themselves wishing for a bit of Mystery Road darkness (two of that series’ stars, Ernie Dingo and Deborah Mailman, star in Kangaroo).
It’s based on the true story of Chris ‘Brolga’ Barns, who, when working as a tour guide in the Northern Territory in the early 2000s, rescued a joey after its mother had been hit by a car. He subsequently founded a kangaroo sanctuary, featured in the BBC series Kangaroo Dundee in 2013.
Chris Masterman, on the other hand, drives off in his vintage red Corvette bearing the license plate Masto1 in pursuit of another TV job in Broome, western Australia and – you guessed it – hits a mother kangaroo near Alice Springs. He prises the joey from its pouch and carries it reluctantly to the nearest town, known as Silver Gum, hoping to redeem himself as an animal lover rather than killer, even though he's just killed another animal. People there aren't keen to help as he already alienated them with his demanding city ways and silly clothes when he stopped off there before the accident. “Hello Ken, where’s Barbie?” a local asks him. The only thing on the bar menu is ham sandwiches, but there’s a Rhodes scholar (Roy Billing) lurking with a large tropical cocktail who helps the kids with their essays on Macbeth. Chris has to wait at least a week for his car to be repaired. A run-down shack with a leaking roof is available. The bathroom is huge – ie, the bush.
Watching Chris from the wings as he rescues the joey is Charlie, an Indigenous Australian girl (impressive 15-year-old newcomer Lily Whiteley), who has just moved to Silver Gum with her mother, Rosie (Deborah Mailman; both pictured left), after her father died. She’s miserable, resentful and lonely and spends most of her time running with mobs of kangaroos (three have taken up residence in her bedroom, to her mother’s despair), skipping school and refusing to make friends with anyone, even though she’s a talented football player that the other kids want on their side. She has a special bond with ‘roos as her father felt that they were totems, connecting Indigenous people with the past.
She persuades Chris that anyone who kills a kangaroo is duty bound to care for the joey. “It’s a custom,” she hisses at him. If someone ignores this, the consequences are dire. Although this is pure fabrication on Charlie's part, their bond is established, with Chris gradually becoming part of the community (there’s a nice moment when Rosie chuckles at the concept of someone being cancelled in Silver Gum) and finding his true self - his ‘roo videos go viral, so his quest for fame is assuaged as well - and helping Lily settle in at the same time. But can she persuade him to stay when a high-flying city job beckons? It’s a chunk of happy, wholesome escapism, with the desert landscapes of the Arrente Country as a powerful backdrop.
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