Saroo Brierley (Dev Patel) goes in search of his long-lost family in Lion.

Like many movies gunning for Oscars at this time of year, Lion is based on a true story—an incredible one. Unfortunately, the screen adaptation from director Garth Davis and screenwriter Luke Davies does little to showcase the inherent power of its story, and at times actively undermines it.

The movie begins in 1986 with four-year-old Saroo (Sunny Pawar) and his older brother Guddu begging on the streets of Khandwa, India. Their mother works in construction and often struggles to make enough to feed her two sons and infant daughter. One night on a visit to Calcutta, Guddu leaves Saroo alone in a train station as he searches for short-term work. While he’s gone, Saroo falls asleep, and when he wakes up, Guddu is gone.

Without a smartphone or even the geographic know-how necessary to explain his situation to an adult, Saroo inadvertently embarks on a journey that takes him more than a thousand miles away from home. This is the strongest section of the film; Pawar displays considerable range for his young age, and Davis effectively conveys the disorientation that a young child would feel if his life were suddenly ripped away from him. On the other hand, the movie appears to sanitize aspects of his experience — Saroo is rarely shown eating or looking disheveled, despite infrequent access to food and a shower.

The movie turns more conventional once Saroo arrives in the care of a benevolent Australian couple, Sue and John Brierley (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham). An abrupt flash-forward introduces Dev Patel as a grown-up Saroo, who’s struggling to move on from a loss he was almost too young to fully grasp. Maybe he doesn’t have to. Armed with nothing but vague memories of the appearance of his surroundings, Saroo takes to Google Earth in a fervent search for the place where he grew up, wondering if his family would even be there upon his return.

It’s easy to see why The Weinstein Company found the real-life Saroo’s story worthy of cinematic treatment. But it’s harder to understand why the filmmakers saw the need to emphasize its most cliched aspects—white saviors solving a non-white person’s problem for him, a tepid romance between Saroo and an Aussie named Lucy (Rooney Mara), a gaudy wall with printed out Google Earth images and thumb-tacks. The movie also skips over Saroo’s transition from a homeless child to an Indian boy in an Australian community, which strikes me as one of the most interesting aspects of his journey.

Instead, the movie indulges in far-too-frequent flashbacks and dream sequences, montages that elide depth and nuance and a nagging sense of cultural ignorance. Amid the excessive manipulation, Patel proves charming and charismatic, and Kidman nails a few moments of pathos, even if the script renders them overwrought. No movie with a story this compelling should be rendered overwrought, though. Lion gets in the way of what could have made it great.

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Lion
Directed by Garth Davis
Written by Luke Davies
With Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara
Rated PG-13 for thematic material and some sensuality
120 minutes
Opens today at Regal Ballston Common Stadium, Regal Kingstowne and Regal Fairfax Towne Center