MOVIE REVIEW

From Australia comes a romantic comedy that trades in ruby slippers for a lawn chair.

By Carina Chocano, Times Staff Writer

"Danny Deckchair" is an Australian romantic comedy about a suburban stiff who hitches a lawn chair to some helium balloons and accidentally floats off to a better life. First-time feature director Jeff Balsmeyer, a former storyboard artist who won a best short film award at Cannes, based the story on reports of similar feats worldwide. According to production notes, "cluster ballooning" is a growth sport, but no incident on record has resulted in a patio furniturenaut crash landing into the kind of charming hamlet where everybody knows your name, your business and your true inner you.

The FAA will be sorry to hear it, but that's just what happens to Danny (Rhys Ifans), an unassuming cement truck driver with a childlike capacity for wonder. (Either that, or he inhales a lot of helium.) Ifans, who is Welsh but sports a perfect Australian accent, at least to American ears, has played primitive beings before (in Michel Gondry's "Human Nature" and Roger Michell's "Notting Hill"); and as the pre-flight Danny, he is as furry, restless and spooked as a caged lemur.

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It's anybody's guess how this guy wound up with Trudy (Justine Clarke), a flirty, go-getting real estate agent who cancels Danny's eagerly awaited camping trip so she can squire the handsome sportscaster Sandy Upman (Rhys Muldoon) around some properties — and see if perhaps he'd like to put in a backup offer on her.

When Danny discovers that Trudy, whom he's recently overheard referring to him as "one of the little people," has lied about having to work, he skulks around until he decides to turn himself into a flying grape bunch. "I'm just trying to get back to Kansas," he jokes before his liftoff.

By then it's clear Danny is meant to be an Australian Dorothy, albeit one whose Dust Bowl is a smog-choked sprawl, who looks more like Jesus than Judy Garland and who walks a fine line between innocent sage and dim bulb. So it's no surprise when a storm transports him and his balloons to the magical land of Oz, or rather Auz, that whimsically fashion-backward land of Australian misfit comedies. Struck by fireworks, Danny lands in the backyard of his soul mate, Glenda (Miranda Otto) the Good (and only) Parking Cop in the northern town of Clarence. Glenda is the kind of girl who needs her bun loosened, but Otto has such a gingery warmth and luminous smile it's hard to buy her as a lonely meter maid.

The missing Danny becomes an instant national legend. While Trudy and Sandy are thrust into a media maelstrom, Danny quietly assumes a new identity (the media, in their frenzy, apparently neglect to air any photos of him, so the town remains ignorant of the celebrity in their midst). Gradually, in fruit fly years at least, Danny molts his shlubbery and liberates Glenda from her thankless job and her tacit belief that boyfriends don't just fall from the sky.

"Danny Deckchair" follows in the same exuberant tradition as "Muriel's Wedding," without the dark overtones. The scenes shot on the tropical North Coast are as lush and appealing as a resort brochure. Otto and Ifans click as a couple of dreamy, introverted goofballs, although Ifans never quite loses his faraway stoner's gaze. But Clarke steals every scene she's in with her steely cuteness and her winsome opportunism. Ultimately, "Danny Deckchair" is as instantly gratifying and devoid of surprises as a Club Med vacation. It bears no relation to reality whatsoever, but sometimes it's nice to imagine that, somewhere, there's a place nothing like home.

'Danny Deckchair'

MPAA rating: PG-13 for sex-related situations

Times guidelines: Sweet and buoyant, but could sprain your credulity.

Rhys Ifans...Danny Morgan

Miranda Otto...Glenda Lake

Justine Clarke...Trudy Dunphy

Rhys Muldoon...Sandy Upman

John Batchelor...Pete

Crusader Entertainment and MacQuarrie Film Corp. present, in association with Cobalt Media Group, a City Production, released by Lions Gate Films. Writer-director Jeff Balsmeyer. Producer Andrew Mason. Executive producers Howard Baldwin, Karen Baldwin, William J. Immerman. Cinematographer Martin McGrath. Editor Suresh Ayyar. Music David Donaldson, Janet Roddick, Steve Roche. Production designer Kim Buddee. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

In selected theaters.