"Opal Dream" marks the second time British filmmaker Peter Cattaneo has pulled out the cameras since 1997's "The Full Monty," and, although the latest film is charming enough, we're still waiting for him to break free of his sophomore slump.

Perhaps the success of "Monty," which practically had audiences doffing clothes in solidarity with its cast of adorable amateur strippers, casts too big a shadow. (The other film, 2001's "Lucky Break," was modeled too transparently after "Monty.") Although "Opal Dream" marks a pleasing departure from the conventions of the British comedy -- it's based on a children's book and set in the Australian outback -- it's disappointingly small in scope.

In the story, which Cattaneo, Ben Rice and Phil Traill adapted from Rice's novella, "Pobby and Dingan," 8-year-old Kellyanne's inviolable belief in two imaginary friends becomes the catalyst for ill feelings in her town. When her devoted father (Vince Colosimo) -- in deference to Kellyanne's fantasy -- searches down someone's opal mine shaft for her missing friends, he's accused of "ratting," or trying to steal someone else's gems.

The finale, inevitably set in the local magistrate's hearing room, is too freighted with predictability and overwrought drama to truly transport or surprise us. "Opal" seems content enough to get through the story without much fanfare. But it would have been gratifying to spend time getting to know Kellyanne (an engaging Sapphire Boyce) and why she invented her "friends" and to see how the adult world has its own childlike need for delusion and invention. A sense of a moral big picture -- the kind of perspective that made "The Full Monty" so meaningful to moviegoers a decade ago -- would have given what is essentially a good-hearted film a lot more luster.

-- Desson Thomson (Feb. 2, 2007)

Contains mild profanity and violence.