This antipodean coming of age drama starts promisingly enough with eccentric character introductions and the visualisation of a child's imaginings (a walk home becomes a jungle safari), but rapidly takes root in the conventions of very average children's afternoon serials. Twelve-year-old Geoff (Fulford) is an impressionable dreamer who lives on a beautiful beach and is savouring a perfect summer until reality, reason and the pragmatic perceptions of adulthood break the magic spell he's woven for himself.
The focal point for this transition is the boy's relationship with a gawky madman. Stephen Papps, however, is unimpressive as the pitiful Firpo, a nutter-by-numbers, with his very presence and the nature of his mental problems too vaguely accounted for. Even given that Geoff might be drawn from his stolid family to complicity with a ridiculed outsider, Firpo never really rings true. Around this friendship, so lacking in the charm intended, the film busies itself with a prosaic father, obnoxious siblings, and all the period trappings and family parlour amusements of the pre-television era nostalgia piece