The Good Lie, film review: Charming drama focuses on refugees adjusting to life in the US

(12A) Philippe Falardeau, 110 mins Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Corey Stoll, Sarah Baker

Reese Witherspoon and Corey Stoll in 'The Good Lie' (Alcon Entertainment, LLC)

The Good Lie is a charming, very sentimental drama about young Sudanese adults trying to build themselves a new life in the USA. It starts in grim fashion during the civil war in Sudan.

Children from a village in southern Sudan are orphaned, traumatised and forced to walk hundreds of miles before finding sanctuary of a sort in a refugee camp in Kenya. Several years later, they are given the opportunity to move to America. Three of the so-called "Lost Boys" (Arnold Oceng, Emmanuel Jal, Ger Duany) end up in Kansas, where Reese Witherspoon is in Sally Field-mode as the hard-drinking but kind-hearted employment agency counsellor assigned to look after the trio.

The film is predictable but affecting and often funny in its depiction of the young Sudanese attempting to adjust to US culture. They're not accustomed to fast food, supermarkets or electric lights. They are naive but also perceptive about this new world.

This may be a story about refugees from a civil war but it turns into a sweet-natured, feelgood movie. It is engagingly played by Witherspoon and the Sudanese actors. The director Philippe Falardeau, working from a screenplay by Margaret Nagle, doesn't patronise his characters. The only downside in such a likeable and optimistic film is that it risks trivialising the suffering that took its protagonists to America in the first place.