Africa United

The high-minded ideals and winsome innocence of the Children's Film Foundation have long been consigned to the annals of British cinema history. Watching this upbeat tale of an unlikely journey down the spine of Africa, though, it's almost as if it never went away.

When gifted soccer prodigy Fabrice is invited to perform at the opening ceremony of this summer's World Cup football tournament, he entrusts the minutiae of the trip to his self-appointed manager Dudu. Unfortunately his good-natured mate accidentally boards them on a bus to the Congo, the first of many missteps on an odyssey that sees them encounter a child soldier, a runaway sex worker and more than one apparently impassable obstacle.

References to the AIDS pandemic and the Rwandan genocide seem a little dark given the feel-good context. If you're not rooting for Eriya Ndayambaje's perma-grinning Dudu by the end, though, you deserve a red card.