Henry Thomas (yes, the one who befriended E.T.) is Cody, an orphaned American boy living in the Australian Outback with his carer Gaza (Tony Barry). When he's not riding his railbike left, right and centre, the inventive Cody builds things in his garage. One day he learns of a local Aboriginal myth called "frog's dreaming" which is believed to be behind several strange occurrences at the fictional Devil's Knob national park where he lives. That's when Cody recruits his friends, primarily the girl he fancies, Wendy (Rachel Friend) to go on a trek to investigate everything.
Yes, sir. It's The Goonies but in the Outback with a (mostly) local cast. Everything about Frog Dreaming is painfully dated and stagnant even down to the visual effects. Director Brian Trenchard-Smith, who replaced Russell Hagg, brings no zest or humour to his interpretation of Everett De Roche's shamelessly derivative screenplay (although, in fairness, it may have given Trenchard-Smith no room to do so), which tops its genre conventions off with a portrayal of the indigenous Kurdaitcha Man archetype that thankfully would never be considered appropriate today, and has Cody frequently riding his bicycle just like Elliott much more famously did.
Thomas has virtually nothing new to do in a very thin role, Friend is wasted and almost immediately relegated to the token love interest status, and all the adult cast members look totally bored and indifferent (much like I increasingly was while watching it, funnily enough). And then come the deeply hokey effects when we learn what's behind the local disturbances. It's ironic, and unintentionally apt, how Frog Dreaming contains the word "dreaming" in its title, because it almost put in the state of dreaming. 4/10.
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