With humour and heart, new-gen Skip delivers on the warm fuzzies

Don't worry, Skip, the studio behind the popular Paddington movies and the director of Looking for Alibrandi are on it!

With its humour and heart, spectacular outback setting and adorable antics with real-life joeys, Kangaroo may just be the feel-good film successor to Australia's landmark screen export of the late 1960s, Skippy The Bush Kangaroo.

Of course, how we depict our national icon has come ahead in leaps and bounds since the drums-playing, door-opening, rope-untying, piano-tinkling, lock-picking days of heroic Skip saving the day with Sonny on the telly every afternoon after school.

But while there's no "tch tch tch" talking roo schtick in Kangaroo (or obvious twangs of banjo on the soundtrack), there's a welcome echo of the sunny charm and cheerful sense of adventure that amazed and delighted several generations of Australian kids - and millions more around the world.

The film is very loosely based on the experiences of Chris "Brolga" Barns, founder of the Alice Springs Kangaroo Sanctuary, whose escapades raising orphaned joeys featured in the BBC-National Geographic documentary series Kangaroo Dundee.

Directed by Kate Woods, much acclaimed for the 2000 coming-of-age film Looking for Alibrandi, and shot to maximise the cinematic grandeur of its magnificent outback setting, Kangaroo stars Ryan Corr as self-absorbed TV weatherman Chris Masterman, who is stranded in a tiny Northern Territory town while trying to outrun his social media-fuelled cancellation after a live-to-air mishap on Bondi Beach.

In the remote red-dirt community of Silver Gum, 12-year-old Indigenous girl Charlie, who is grieving the loss of her kangaroo-loving father, teaches fish-out-of-water Masterman how to care for an orphaned joey he has rescued from highway roadkill.

As the colourfully droll and quirky, city slicker-disdaining townsfolk tease him, the wayward weatherman, the grieving girl and the orphaned roo nicknamed Liz slowly help each other find their "mob".

Newcomer Lily Whiteley, chosen from more than 300 hopefuls, makes her acting debut as Charlie and she's a delight as the heartbroken adolescent more comfortable running barefoot with the kangaroos than hanging out with the other kids.

Corr, as he takes us on the fallen TV star's unlikeable-to-loveable journey, makes a worthy straight man to the cute joeys and the cheeky locals and their desert-dry humour. Ernie Dingo, Wayne Blair, Trisha Morton-Thomas, Rachel House and Roy Billing bring the mischievous laughs, while Whiteley, Deborah Mailman (as Charlie's mum) and Brooke Satchwell (as Masterman's TV boss) draw out the pathos.

The joeys, orphans in the care of Barns at his sanctuary, inevitably upstage the humans by being, well, spindly-legged, saucer-eyed, cuddlesome baby animals.

Slapstick kickboxing hijinks with a large CGI roo veer more to cringey boxing kangaroo cliche than comic. Some moments of Wake In Fright-lite "ugly Aussie" macho aggro also add a twinge of cultural cringe.

The main human storylines sometimes compete for our attention and sympathy rather than complement each other, as Masterman's misfortunes jar with Charlie's sad, soulful affinity for the wild things.

These quibbles aside, it's hard not to be charmed by Kangaroo. We're talking more Red Dog than Babe-level charm, but it's wholesome, heartfelt, fun family-friendly cinema. And there's pride for Aussie audiences too - not just in the pretty postcard to movie-goers around the world, but a new-gen Skip to remind us just how blessed we are to live down under.