'DISH' WILL MAKE AUDIENCES BEAM.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

Brazenly, beautifully sentimental, ``The Dish'' gives us an offbeat slice of history that we know nothing about - and never really wanted to know anything about - and manages to make it into an appealing charmer full of grace, good humor and perfectly drawn characters.

It's not a movie you're going to want to see based on a synopsis of its story. Watching the true tale of the group of small-town Australians who manned the giant receiving dish that transmitted Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon sounds about as exciting as watching a ``Big Brother'' marathon. Or about as compelling as watching a giant receiving dish change position, which, yes, is actually shown in the film.

And for the first 20 minutes or so, ``The Dish'' is indeed more sleepy than satisfying. But then a wonderful thing happens. The Australian filmmaking team known collectively as Working Dog (they made the little- seen gem ``The Castle'') start to deliver one authentically offbeat character after another, making a town - and an era - come alive in the process. The result is a feel-good film every bit as fun as, say, ``Billy Elliot,'' but infinitely more believable.

That believability has less to do with the movie's origins as a historical footnote than it does the filmmakers' ability to effectively showcase several facets of Australian sensibilities. ``The Dish'' both celebrates and parodies rural Aussies' lack of sophistication and never gets too cute about all the quirkiness. You don't leave the theater feeling as if you've been trapped in the company of a bunch of daft loons for the preceding couple of hours.

``The Dish'' is set in July 1969. The pastoral town of Parkes in New South Wales, Australia, sports the most powerful receiving dish in the Southern Hemisphere, a mammoth, 1,000-ton radio telescope. NASA comes calling, asking the Aussies to partner with its Northern Hemisphere receiver in Goldstone, Calif., and help track the Apollo 11 flight. The Parkes dish would also serve as the back-up transmitter for the first images of man walking on the moon.

Given that the Parkes dish is located on a sheep farm, it's not surprising to find a few eccentrics in the vicinity. The dish's crew is led by dignified, recently widowed scientist Cliff Buxton (Sam Neill) and includes temperamental technician Mitch (Kevin Harrington) and timid calculations guru Glenn (Tom Long), who spends most of the movie trying to work up the courage to ask the lovely Janine (Eliza Szonert) out on a date.

No-nonsense NASA representative Al Burnett (Patrick Warburton) is on hand to make sure everything goes according to plan, which, of course, it doesn't - otherwise, there would be no movie. But ``The Dish'' doesn't hinge its fortunes on suspense, focusing instead on the relationships between the dish's caretakers and assorted townsfolk and visitors.

Those characters are too numerous to mention, but, remarkably, they're all fully alive despite, in some cases, brief screen time. Favorites: amiable mayor Bob McIntyre (Roy Billing), who is nervous about all the sudden attention focused on Parkes, and his wife, May (Genevieve Mooy), who is determined to use it to her social advantage. Their collegiate daughter, Marie (Lenka Kripac), spends the whole movie decrying the space race, punctuating nearly every comment with the words ``I'm serious.''

``Yes,'' mother May tells her, ``far too serious, darling.''

``The Dish'' occasionally gets a little too wide-eyed for its own good, a condition not helped by composer Edmund Choi's overblown score, which borrows, inappropriately, from James Horner's ``Apollo 13'' work. But the film's warm heart beats strong, captured best by Neill's turn of quiet authority. It's an extraordinary performance in an extraordinary film. You'll never think of Neil Armstrong the same way again.

``THE DISH''

(Rated PG-13: brief strong language)

The stars: Sam Neill, Kevin Harrington, Patrick Warburton, Genevieve Moody.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Rob Sitch. Screenplay by Sitch, Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Jane Kennedy. Released by Warner Bros.

Running time: One hour, 41 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle's Sunset 5 in West Hollywood; Laemmle's Monica in Santa Monica.

Our rating: Three and one half stars

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Tom Long plays a lovelorn mathematician in ``The Dish,'' a comedy about an Australian town's unsung role in the drama surrounding the 1969 Apollo moon landing.