Product Description

Opal Dream is the heartwarming family film that Jack Mathews of the New York Daily News declares "will lift you up!" After Kellyanne Williamson's two imaginary friends go "missing," she is suddenly struck by a mysterious illness. Her big brother has never seen these magical playmates, but he knows something must be done to reach his sister. Despite all his doubts, he rallies friends and family for an inspirational journey to find the missing friends. Together, they discover what Kellyanne has always known…that you don't always need to see to believe.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50839 in DVD
• Brand: Universal
• Released on: 2007-04-03
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 86 minutes

Amazon.com
A family film with plenty of heart, Opal Dream draws home the point that sometimes you don't have to see things to believe in them. Set in the Australian outback, the film focuses on Kellyanne (Sapphire Boyce), a sensitive young girl whose only pals are a pair of imaginary friends named Dingan and Pobby. She is so attached to them that her mother sets two extra plates at the dinner table. And when she's at school, she seems oblivious to her schoolmates who mock her as she skips to class "holding" Dingan and Pobby's hands. In an effort to encourage her to make real live friends, her mother takes Kellyanne to a neighbor's pool party while her father agrees to take Dingan and Pobby to the opal mine he has been unsuccessfully prospecting. It is from this point on that the family's fortune turns. To appease his daughter--who insists her father lost her friends--Rex (Vince Colosimo) returns to the mine, only to be accused by another prospector of trying to poach from the latter's reserve. Unable to reconcile herself with the loss of her only friends, Kellyanne's health deteriorates. It is left to her brother Ash (Christian Byers) to make things right by believing in his sister. At times, the viewer is left wondering whether the family--and the town--has been doing Kellyanne a disservice by encouraging her to believe that her imaginary friends are real. Fragile and gentle, she may have benefited from talking to a therapist years ago. Directed by Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty), Opal Dream is uneven and doesn't always flow smoothly. But the child actors are charming and the message is sweet. As Ash says, "No matter what anyone said, they really did live." --Jae-Ha Kim

Customer Reviews

"When You Dream You Are Supposed To Be Asleep" What Is Real And What Is Imaginary?
Synopis: Little nine year old Kellyanne (Sapphire Boyce) lives with her parents and older brother in rural Australia. Her Father (Vince Colosimo) is a dreamer who hopes to secure his families future by discovering a cache of opals under the harsh desert climate. As he labors away without reward Kellyanne's Mother (Jacqueline McKenzie) brings in the families only income working as a clerk in a local grocery store. Her big brother Ashmol (Christian Byers) is a well adjusted outgoing child. Kellyanne is quite different. She is a sweet but extremely introverted child who sends all her time communicating with two imaginary friends named Pobby and Dingan.

This seemingly harmless fantasy is tolerated by the family to such an extent that they even set two additional plates at the table for the invisible playmates. However when Pobby and Dingan go missing the little girl becomes mysterious ill and nobody knows what to do to restore her to health. That is nobody except her brother Ashmol who decides to organize a search for the lost duo. His biggest problem now is to figure out how do you find something that's invisible?

`Opal Dream' ('06) is a endearing story in the tradition of `E.T.' and `Indian in the Cupboard' that can be equally enjoyed by young and old alike. The plot might be a little slow and challenging for some younger children but the implications of this mythic tale from Down-Under are exquisitely subtle and absolutely fascinating. Surely this bittersweet tale of transition from childhood to adolescence will generate much thought in viewers of all ages. What is real and what is imaginary? Do any of us really know for sure?

The movie Opal Dream
This is a sweet family film. We bought this the other day, and I sat down and watched it by myself before showing it to my children. Because it was a PG rating, I wanted to see if it was the family film it claimed to be. There were only two curse words that I could remember in it, and I let my children watch it that afternoon. It's about a father struggling to survive in Australia with a wife and two children. They are in the lower poverty level of society, and the father owns a opal mine that's gone dry. He can't find any opals, and between his hard work there, he comes home to his daughter Kellyanne, who has two imaginary friends she plays with constantly. If you look on the photo of the DVD you will see her holding their imaginary hands, but look in the dirt on the road, and you will see their shadows. Kellyanne loves these two friends of hers to the point where she takes them to school with her, goes to the market with them, and plays with them at home too. Her mother even sets plates out for them at their family meal time. Needless to say, with the frustration of the father's opal mine, and Kellyanne's imaginary friends, he decides to take them to work with him, in hopes that Kellyanne would forget about them and play like a normal kid when invited to a BBQ. As Kellyanne's two friends are "lost" at the mines, the father helps look for them in the dark on the night that he lost them. He gets arrested, as other people running their own mines think he's trying to trespass on their mines. This movie is sweet, but uses a lot of Australian slang words, that I didn't know what they meant. The word "dag" was used by Kellyanne's brother, and I looked it up on a website, which said it meant "Bits of manure that stick on a sheep's bottom, also used when referring to one as a 'loser'." They used also another word, "ratter" which wasn't on the website of Australian slang words, so I believe it either means "thief", or "trespasser", as they called the father this when he entered an opal mine without permission of the owner. They called him a ratter throughout the whole movie. Anyway, I won't explain the ending so I won't spoil the outcome of the movie. My kids loved this movie and asked again to watch it last night. It's a nice movie about a family sticking together no matter what other people think about them. Good entertainment for the whole family.

Not what I was expecting
This movie was not what I was expecting it to be. I was expecting a much lighter movie with a lot of sequences where you see the little girl's make believe world. The closest you get to seeing her imaginary friends is a picture she draws of them.
That being said, it was still a pretty good movie. I would say the movie focuses more on her older brother than anything else and the processes of him (and eventually, the town) to see this girl's imaginary world. By the end I was wishing I had a brother like hers.
This is a pretty safe movie for family viewing (although some spots I would consider too dark for small children to watch).