To fully appreciate the sunbaked, bright-beyond-squinting intentions of "Swimming Upstream," we need to pause and remember just what a 50-meter pool lane means to Australians.

Each swimming race to an Aussie is like a World Series to an American. Chlorinated water helps float a continent-sized chip off the shoulders of a nation founded by transported convicts.

So excuse a bit of the extra melodrama poured into the otherwise engaging "Swimming Upstream." The true-life story from the 1950s occasionally stumbles while turning sport into fable, but then so did "Field of Dreams" and "Miracle." Sometimes the Speedo still fits.

Besides, any movie pairing Australian treasures Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis wins at least two stars just for trying.

Rush is Harold, the drunken, charismatic patriarch of the overpopulated Fingleton family. He trolls for longshoreman's work on the Brisbane docks, when he's not loading his midships with beer. Wife Dora (Davis) keeps the five kids out of harm's way, and fights back when she's fed up.

Harold is to mean drunks what a wetsuit is to a bikini - he covers much more territory. He lies awake at night scheming how to set his children against one another, and constantly culls the weakest from his herd for extra abuse.

As featured middle son Tony, Jesse Spencer is too good to be true. He plays piano, defends his mum, works hard and keeps his shirts crisp. But Spencer and a cast of younger stand-ins sells it well, making the Fingleton kids look golden and undaunted even at age 11.

Harold ridicules middle sons Tony and John until he finds out they swim fast; then, in one of those classic good news-bad news moments, World's Meanest Dad suddenly gets involved in his sons' lives, as World's Meanest Coach.Director Russell Mulcahy's best moments show the dreaminess of the cool blue water as an escape from cruel reality during Australia's scorching summers. The brothers delight in the newfound power of their bodies, and watch for the moment they might finally win over their father.What mars "Swimming Upstream" is repetition, diving into the cesspool of Harold's drunken rages one too many times. We sense where Tony is going and why long before Mulcahy finishes showing the disintegration of the Fingleton household.Still, it makes for a meaty family movie at a time when few parents can stomach "Are We There Yet?" Tony's form of heroism, while maudlin at times, is a welcome change from a string of tired Hollywood plots.