WONDROUS OBLIVION — ** 1/2 —Sam Smith, Delroy Lindo, Emily Woof; rated PG (violence, profanity, racial epithets).
Everything's cricket, more or less, in "Wondrous Oblivion," a British coming-of-age drama that hits its predetermined plot points with modest period charm. You've seen this movie many times before, but it won't kill you to pretend you haven't.
Sam Smith plays David Wiseman, a gangly, cricket-obsessed 11-year-old in 1960 London who's excluded on two fronts. He's Jewish — which in post-World War II England means the gentiles politely point out his "difference," the better to feel enlightened — and he's a klutz. The appearance of a new family next door, the Samuelses from Jamaica, takes both pressures off.
When racist neighbors draw in their fences against the blacks, the Wisemans are temporarily included, provided they'll eventually convince their landlord to kick the Samuelses out (if they don't, the tacit threat is that they'll go back to being treated as pariahs). Dennis Samuels (Delroy Lindo) is a cricket nut, though, and David watches with delight as he builds a pitch in his tiny backyard and starts coaching older daughter Judy (Leonie Elliott).
Soon enough, David is taking informal lessons with the two, and those lessons pay off on the school playing field and in life. "Wondrous Oblivion" charts its knock-kneed hero's growing awareness with whimsical predictability; the film's period decor, soundtrack mix of pop standards and early '60s ska, and occasional flights of fancy (David's cricket player cards come alive and talk to him) are offered with quiet conviction.
There are unseemly passions at play, but writer-director Paul Morrison isn't sure what to do with them. David's mother, Ruth (Emily Woof), a war refugee who got married too young to a man (Stanley Townsend) too old, warns her son away from the newcomers only to find herself ecstatically drawn to the man next door. The scenes between Ruth and Dennis — in a Jamaican dance hall, in the quiet of his kitchen — muss the film's placid surface. They feel genuinely, dangerously erotic.
"Wondrous Oblivion" backs away from their heat, though. Ruth goes through a consciousness-raising similar to what Diane Lane experienced in 1999's "A Walk on the Moon," but the character's mind and body go off on different tangents; once she sees a peace button on another mom, she's back on track. Woof gives a startling performance as a shy woman shaken by her own lusts, but the movie almost cruelly lets her down.
The treatment of racism is tame. As in "To Kill a Mockingbird," we see life's grown-up complexities through the eyes of a child; unlike that classic, the resolution here seems soothingly childlike. Smith is sympathetic as the beleaguered David, but he's a blank slate; for all his blushing and bowling, we never learn what makes him tick. The same goes for the other characters. David gets to know the family next door, but we never truly do.
Still, "Wondrous Oblivion" goes down smoothly, and audiences who want to be preached to about tolerance without having their own sensitivities stepped on will embrace it. Morrison directs with tastefulness and tact, and if there's a difference between the two — or if frankness might have been the more honest approach — he probably knows many of us don't want to hear about it.
"Wondrous Oblivion" is rated PG for thematic material, some violence, sensuality, language including racial remarks, and brief smoking by minors. Running time: 106 minutes.