There has, of course, been some tinkering along the way. The novel revolved around five adolescent boys, temporarily sprung from their Catholic orphanage in the Australian outback and plunked down among the eccentrics in a tiny fishing village. Marc Rosenberg's screenplay shrinks the crew to four boys: Spit (James Fraser), Spark (Christian Byers), Misty (Lee Cormie), and Maps (Daniel Radcliffe). As fans of the latest Harry Potter film will be aware, nature has ensured that Radcliffe can no longer play a spindly preteen. No worries, though. Maps is now 17, a kind of tribal elder puffing on his furtive ciggies and dreaming of girls. Needless to say, his prayers will be answered, courtesy of the foxy, booze-swigging Lucy (Teresa Palmer). And his heart will be broken, according to the logic of Summer of '42 and just about every other coming-of-age story ever committed to film.

Yet Maps's sentimental education is only half the story. Not long after the boys arrive, a couple in the village shows some interest in adopting one of them. At once the prospect of escaping from the orphanage fractures their fellowship. Who can be cuter, smarter, the most considerate or the most adorable? This Darwinian struggle marks the real end of innocence. The boys gyrate between solidarity and dog-eat-dog aggression, and when their host, an old salt with an ailing wife, presents them each with a toy gyroscope for Christmas, he casually defines the device as "a ship's conscience."

Directing his first feature, Rod Hardy goes easy on the wistful reaction shots, and wisely leans on the weatherbeaten landscape, with its golden dunes and lunar crags overlooking the water. There's an air of timelessness, which can be confusing. When crusty Father Scully (Frank Gallacher) drives the boys to the shore, for example, his car looks like a Depression-era jalopy. So it's something of a shock to hear Norman Greenbaum's 1969 hit "Spirit in the Sky" blasting out of a tiny record player--and to recall that the same song was just used in the considerably less gossamer Knocked Up. In an age devoted to the dutiful gross-out, December Boys is perhaps too proper, too satisfied with its sepia-toned sweetness. For better or worse, though, it's the kind of movie you could bring home to meet your sister.