Based on Tony Briggs's 2004 stage play, The Sapphires is a crowd-pleasing, feel-good comedy about four sisters who discovered their voices while entertaining troops in Vietnam. Director Wayne Blair applies a light touch to some potentially thorny subject matter - the enduring pain of a stolen generation of Aboriginal children forcibly taken from their parents, the devastation of the war on the indigenous population - but like the sibling's songbook, his film remains upbeat. Twenty-three year-old singer Jessica Mauboy, a runner-up on the Australian version of The X Factor, is luminous in her big screen debut, delivering a strong performance as well as the powerhouse vocals.
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