Canada rules tonight at Sprockets, when the charming, surreal, family comedy Virtual Mom makes its world premiere.

 About 306 eager kids and parents will pile into the theatre at the Royal Ontario Museum for the screening, part of the third annual Toronto International Film Festival for Children.

 In Hollywood, 3,502 kms away, the film's creator, producer and star Sheila McCarthy will be aching to know what happens.

 "I'm so delighted that we have a shot at being seen," McCarthy said yesterday from L.A., where she will spend the next few days auditioning for American projects.

 That means she will miss out on tonight's Sprockets festivities, which will include appearances by Virtual Mom director Laurie Lynd, producer Paul Brown and McCarthy's kid co-stars Sumela Kay and Lauren Collins.

 "I am really, really honoured that it's going to be seen at Sprockets, which has become such an interesting and potentially important event for children," McCarthy said.

 For Sprockets, selecting Virtual Mom was a slam dunk. "It's vitally important to get Canadian content in the festival," said Sprockets director and programmer Jane Schoettle. It is no accident that Virtual Mom is a made-for-TV project.

 "What we have in Canada is a really huge, important, international-calibre children's television industry," Schoettle said. "We do not really have a feature-film industry for children, aside from the work that Rock Demers (a Quebec producer) does and occasional one-offs from other filmmakers.

 "So we grab TV films such as Virtual Mom and, last year, Dead Aviators. As long as the film looks good on the big screen, then I think it's a good choice. Virtual Mom looks good."

 Virtual Mom, based on one of McCarthy's original ideas and inspired by an incident with her own daughter back home in Stratford, is the story of a wacky, loving mom (McCarthy) whose enthusiasm embarrasses her teen daughter (Collins).

 Thanks to a computer glitch and a lot of magic, mom suddenly finds a way to conjure her own 13-year-old self in the flesh (played by Kay). Posing as a new student, she goes to school and befriends her own daughter, something she can't do as mom because of the generation and taste gap dividing them.

 "I think it has such great heart," director Lynd said yesterday. "Both Sheila and I thought of it as a '60s Disney comedy, like a Hayley Mills film. We're both huge fans of The Trouble With Angels. And my favourite film is still Mary Poppins. So it's such a thrill for me to do a kids movie."

 For McCarthy, Virtual Mom marks her producing debut. "I loved the casting process," she said of finding the kids and persuading Hollywood veteran Debbie Reynolds to co-star as her own slick, sarcastic mother in the movie.

 "It's my favourite part of producing. It's a really important part of the process yet, ironically, auditioning is the worst part to me as an actor."

 Reynolds was a coup because the project needed an international name to impress investors, McCarthy said. Then Reynolds turned out to be delightful to work with.

 "She got it. She made it work. She was a complete trouper and loved doing it."

 Now, as the producer, McCarthy is eager for the Virtual Mom screening at Sprockets to put pressure on CBC-TV to broadcast the film, which the corporation invested in.

 "I hope it will egg on the CBC to show it. All I know now is that we've been told about 500 times that they have too much inventory and it will have to wait. But it's very frustrating.

 "We sold it to the Americans in about five minutes. We've sold it to a lot of countries around the world, like Australia and Italy. But we can't get it shown right here in Canada where it started and where it belongs."

 For Sprockets information and tickets, call the Bell Infoline at 416-968-FILM.


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