Here from Australia is a sweet-natured family comedy – but gentle, and really I think best for very young audiences. Ed Oxenbould plays 12-year-old Dylan, a shy boy whose dad Jack (Sam Worthington) has become a depressive deadbeat since Dylan’s mum died. But Dylan discovers that there’s one thing at school that he’s really good at, and that’s making paper planes.
So the race is on to get Dylan to the World Paper Plane Championships in Japan, where competitors must fold their own design from origami sheets handed out about a minute before the start. Here Dylan must confront the nastiest competitor: spoilt brat Jason (Nicholas Bakopoulos-Cooke) for whom winning is everything. And of course Dylan must reconnect with his dad. This movie makes a slightly pious deal about winning not being as important as how you play the game, but inevitably finds a way of having its cake and eating it on that score. The planes’ flight is invariably CGI-assisted, and the resulting comedy is mild, but there is a relaxed, happy atmosphere.
