TOUCHING JOURNEY FROM SUDAN.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

The documentary ``God Grew Tired of Us'' focuses on three now-grown men who were among the 25,000 ``Lost Boys'' of Southern Sudan -- African child refugees who fled their villages during a two-decade civil war with the Arab-dominated North.

Panther Bior, John Bul Dau and Daniel Abol Pach survived long treks through the desert, often going for days without food, and having to drink urine when no water could be found. They wound up spending more than a decade in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, until they were finally selected, along with 3,800 other Lost Boys, to go to America and start new lives.

Filmmakers Christopher Quinn and Tommy Walker began filming Bior, Dau and Pach at Kenya's Kakuma Refugee Camp a few weeks before their first-ever airplane rides in 2001, and checked in on their resettlement progress in Pittsburgh and Syracuse, N.Y., over the next three to four years. What they generally present are three impeccably admirable young men who, despite inevitable pangs of dislocation and minor complaints about our society, prove to be immensely optimistic, hard-working and dedicated to helping their surviving friends and relatives back in Africa.

More like a feature film than most documentaries, the movie naturally develops a three-act structure, each with its own distinct tone. Part one, narrated by Nicole Kidman, covers the war and its attendant humanitarian crisis (complete with archive footage of starved, skeletal children) and life in the somewhat cheerier, though still highly deprived, Kakuma Camp. Our three friends and others discuss the horrors of what they've experienced and the pump of audience sympathy is fully primed.

Things take a warm (though some may view it as condescending) turn as soon as the Lost Boys buckle into their coach-class seats. Best observation: Even though there sometimes was nothing to eat in the camp, when they had it, it was better than airplane food.

There's more fun as the new arrivals learn a wide range of skills, from turning on electric lights to ice skating. Their first visit to an average supermarket results, of course, in wide-eyed wonderment.

And as the movie eases into its third act, when the guys have to get jobs and pay bills, a certain melancholy sets in. Kidman's voice disappears from the soundtrack and the men start explaining their own, more complex feelings themselves. They're grateful, of course, for the opportunity they've been given -- even minimum-wage drudge work for corporate America beats sub-subsistence living in a war zone. But to a man, Blor, Dau and Pach feel guilty about the comrades and loved ones they've left behind. Perhaps as a means to preserve their African sense of self as well as help other Sudanese, each man contributes time, effort and money to relief and networking efforts.

It's all quite inspiring, and the three friends the filmmakers chose to follow would fit even the most prejudicial American's concept of the ideal immigrant. But there's a sense that the movie isn't giving us the whole story as well.

Surely there are Lost Boys who didn't adjust to our world so well (we're told of one whose post-traumatic stress led to institutionalization, but we never really got to know him). And what's with the apparent celibacy? The guys have African wives now, but for all the years the movie follows them, there's not a romantic interest in sight.

It also would have been nice to get an updated political context on screen. A cease-fire seems to have held in Southern Sudan for the last couple of years while the Khartoum government has turned its genocidal attention west to Darfur, but the movie doesn't explain that.

It's emotional and smart, nailing both audience and jury prizes at last year's Sundance Film Festival. But remember, through your empathetic tears, that the full scope of these fine men's -- and their people's -- story has been finessed for effect.

Bob Strauss [phone]

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GOD GREW TIRED OF US - Three and one half stars

(PG: violence, starvation victims)

Director: Christopher Quinn, Tommy Walker.

Running time: 1 hr. 39 min.

Playing: Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Westpark 8, Irvine.

In a nutshell: Documentary about three Sudanese refugees adjusting to life in America is unavoidably touching. In English and Dinka with English subtitles.