Behind the Scenes:’Harry Potter’ down under in ‘The December Boys’>

When Warner Brothers bought the distribution rights to director Rod Hardy’s “The December Boys,” shot in 2005, it was no act of altruism. The small, low budget indie is a quiet, quintessentially Aussie film that will never give the big boys a run for their money. Why was Warner Brothers interested? Two words — Daniel Radcliffe. Hot off of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” with sterling reviews for his London stage debut last February in Peter Shaffer’s “Equus” (complete with nude scene), like a magic kite, Radcliffe draws an ever-expanding tail of hard core fans to whichever project he appears in. And he needs all of his considerable charisma to engage an audience in the lives and destinies of “The December Boys.”

Four boys from St. Gregory’s Orphanage in the great Australian Outback of the 1960s share a December birthday. Maps (Radcliffe), the oldest, sees himself as big brother and champion of the other three — Spit, Sparks and Misty, the narrator of the piece. As a special treat, the boys are sent on holiday to the seaside and end up boarding in a ramshackle cottage in a picturesque cove with an eccentric retired boson (Aussie film legend Jack Thompson) and his dying wife.

Also resident in the cove are a younger childless couple, carnival motorcycle stunt rider “Fearless” and his French wife, Therese. When the boys discover that Fearless and Therese are considering adopting one of them, a mild-mannered competition ensues. But these are nice boys — maybe a little too nice — and nothing apart from some good-natured one-upmanship takes place.

While the focus of the film is ostensibly Misty — you know the type, wide-eyed orphan with big glasses trying to find out who he is (freckles, no lightning-shaped scar) — the dramatic core is left to Daniel Radcliffe’s Maps.

A loner by nature, cut off from his younger charges by restlessness, age and the realization that adoption for him is a pointless fantasy, Maps meets another restless resident of the cove, the teenage Lucy. Where Harry Potter gazes wistfully at Cho Chang with the innocence of a first crush, Maps watches Lucy like a starving man eyeing a steak dinner — one dressed in hot pants and skimpy peasant blouse. The movie fails to tell us anything about Lucy — who she is, where she comes from, where she’s going. All the story gives us is a flirty flower child determined to seduce a more than willing Maps. When she takes off for Melbourne without a word shortly after, the abandoned lover is left feeling angry and betrayed. This sense of betrayal is doubled when Maps discovers that his hero Fearless isn’t the daredevil motorcyclist he thought he was but just a guy who works for the nearby carnival shoveling camel dung.

Although Radcliffe plays these scenes with intense sincerity and carefully honed Aussie accent, they are stand-alone moments in a routine plot.

Life and death, the movie tells us, are happening all around, from the bosun’s dying wife to Therese’s agony at her own childlessness, but such emotions seem incidental to the main story viewed from the outside by uncomprehending children.

Near the end of the movie, when two of the boys are nearly drowned, a contrived religious vision makes an unconvincing appearance and a less than satisfying finale.

Too many feel good clichés, too much unflavored sentiment flatlines the drama. It’s hard to care whether or not any of the boys are adopted. Conditions at the orphanage aren’t bad enough to ratchet up the tension over who will be the chosen child.

Fans will go to see Radcliffe and they should. He has his moments and he gets better with each project.

The film itself plays out like a day at the beach, slow, lazy, full of salt and sand, but as the sun slips toward the credit lines, it’s hard not to wish there had been at least one frisson of a shark’s fin visible in the water.

See you at the movies!