AUSTRALIA-SET `OPAL DREAM' IS NO CINEMATIC GEM.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

Stories about a sickly girl, her imaginary friends and her indulgent daddy's courtroom saga are probably best left on the page. Witness the queasy, up-with-people tear-jerker ``Opal Dream.''

Its source, Ben Rice's spare novel, ``Pobby and Dingan,'' is full of blunt humor, bizarre characters and great Outback atmosphere. On the screen ... well, it won't make you forget ``Harvey,'' that's for sure.

The invisible friends of 8-year-old Kellyanne (Sapphire Boyce) aren't 6-foot-tall rabbits, though one of them does have a wooden leg. (I can't remember if the afflicted pal is Pobby or Dingan.)

Kellyanne has tea parties with her imaginary friends and pushes them on swings, dines with them and holds their hands as she skips down the school hallways. Reputable psychiatric help is apparently in short supply in the Australian Outback, where the film's story takes place.

Kellyanne's parents indulge her fantasy life, though her miner father (Vince Colosimo) is trying (sort of) to wean her off Pobby and Dingan. Dad's efforts go awry, however, when he ``takes'' Kellyanne's playmates with him to work and then leaves them behind.

This sets up the film's three tear-jerking subplots -- the girl's illness, the father's legal troubles and the family's neighborly woes.

Whimsy can -- no, must -- triumph, of course, particularly when ``Opal Dream'' comes from Peter Cattaneo, the director of ``The Full Monty,'' whose post-``Monty'' career free fall cannot compensate for the number of ghastly ``Monty'' knock-offs churned out in the past decade. ``Opal Dream'' isn't going to change his fortunes.

Cattaneo's cause isn't exactly helped by his young, first-timer lead, Boyce, who could charitably be called Dakota Fanning Lite.

Better is Christian Byers, who plays Kellyanne's older brother, a boy whose initial embarrassment over his sister's escapades turns into familial loyalty and a realization that, yes, sometimes you have to believe in things unseen.

True enough. But such belief is much more possible if the director isn't cuing up Norman Greenbaum's ``Spirit in the Sky'' while asking his audience to buy into his life lesson.

Glenn Whipp, [phone].

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OPAL DREAM - Two stars

(PG: mild thematic elements, language, some violence)

Starring: Sapphire Boyce, Christian Byers, Vince Colosimo.

Director: Peter Cattaneo.

Running time: 1 hr. 26 min.

Playing: Laemmle's One Colorado in Pasadena; Landmark's Westside Pavilion in West Los Angeles.

In a nutshell: A tear-jerker that should have stayed on the page.