True Spirit (PG, 109mins) Directed by Sarah Spillane **½
Like her sails, Jessica Watson’s (Titans’ Teagan Croft) dream lies in tatters.
An altercation with a wayward cargo ship has left her beloved boat “Pink” de-masted and the 16-year-old herself lucky to be alive.
Just as importantly – the timing couldn’t be worse. It was only the first night of Watson’s “trial run” ahead of the Queensland teen’s ambitious attempt to sail unassisted – and non-stop – around the globe.
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It’s been her obsession for the past four years, as she’s studied the ocean, waves and everything she could about sailing boats, as well as completing the mandatory 10,000 nautical miles. But now, just weeks out from her proposed launch, she knows she’ll not only need to repair her boat, but a potentially battered reputation.
Sure enough, the media are waiting back onshore to gloat, before they and politicians start publicly wringing their hands about how anyone could contemplate letting her attempt to cross the Equator, let alone round the “four capes”, in order to enter the record books as the youngest person ever to complete a 21,600-mile circumnavigation.
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Julie (Anna Paquin) and Roger Watson (Josh Lawson) and Ben Bryant (Cliff Curtis) anxiously wait for news of sailing adventurer Jessica Watson in True Spirit.
But the Watsons’ have always been adventurers. After emigrating west across the Tasman, New Zealand-born Roger (Bombshell’s Josh Lawson) and Julie (Anna Paquin) lived onboard a 16-metre cabin cruiser with their four children for five years, before touring around “the Lucky Country” in a purpose-built double-decker bus. So, despite fierce scrutiny, they are fully supportive of the daughter, as is her “grouchy advisor”, “infamous sailor” Ben Byrant (Cliff Curtis).
There’s just the small matter of patching up the boat with “no money, no manpower and no location to fix it”, in time before she runs the risk of encountering icebergs on her voyage, or the Queensland government manage to pass a bill to prevent her from ever leaving Australian waters.
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Teagan Croft plays Jessica Watson in Netflix’s True Spirit.
Watson’s trials and tribulations captured the world’s attention in 2009 and 2010. Recording all her adventures as she went, a documentary – narrated by Sir Richard Branson – and the book that inspired this dramatisation just part of the later media blitz. In some ways, it’s a surprise no one thought to bring her to story to the screen before.
Unfortunately, while both Croft and Curtis impress (and it’s nice to hear the always watchable Paquin use her Kiwi accent), they’re let down by a soggy, schmaltzy script (some great, empowering sentiments about overcoming adversity and the bravery of admitting that you’re not OK, end up being ladled up to the audience a little too thickly) and some disappointingly cheap-looking sailing scenes. Most of time the open water appears remarkably calm, backdrops often looking like old-style back-projections, before what might as well be footage borrowed from 2000’s The Perfect Storm kicks in for the big climax. It all felt so artificial, I almost half-expected to see a CGI-tiger onboard with her.
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While True Spirit does have its moments, compared to other Australian kidult movies and family films from the last decade, this struggles to rise above long periods where you feel like it’s stuck in the dramatic doldrums.
Curtis “composite character” could also be regarded as a bit of a cheat, especially with a shadowy backstory that’s only ever hinted at, while the arc of smug and vitriolic journalist Craig Atherton (Todd Lasance) was straight out of ‘70s Skippy or ‘80s Secret Valley episode.
Still it does have its moments, but compared to other Australian kidult movies and family films from the last decade – like Blueback, Go!, Oddball or Paper Planes – this struggles to rise above long periods where you feel like it’s stuck in the dramatic doldrums.
True Spirit begins streaming on Netflix at 9pm on Friday, January 3.
