Danielle Catanzariti sees Hollywood from down under

Esther Blueburger "befriends a duck, talks to God through the toilet and break-dances at her bat mitzvah." In other words, Hey! Hey! It's Esther Blueburger is my kind of movie.

Replace the sprinkles with braces and you've almost got a younger Betty Suarez. The story is a little Betty-like, too. Danielle Catanzariti makes her film debut as Esther, a 13-year-old Jewish girl who doesn't fit in at her private girls' school — or with her family. And she's nervous about her bat mitzvah.

Things start to change for Esther when she meets Sunni, played by Whale Rider's Keisha Castle-Hughes, the "tough girl" at the local public school.

Esther decides to switch from private school to public school — without telling her mom — and reinvents herself, with help from Sunni and her mother, Mary, played by the wonderful Toni Collette. Here's the trailer.

If I wasn't convinced before, seeing Collette on a motorcycle makes this film a must-see. It opens in Australia in March; hopefully we'll see it in the U.S. soon after.

Although this is Catanzariti's first movie, she has been a stage actress in Australia for several years. In fact, Cate Blanchett handpicked her to star in Blackbird, which Blanchett is directing for the Sydney Theater Company. The play is getting good reviews from critics, despite its controversial subject matter, pedophilia. Catanzariti's next film appearance will be in Elise, with Natalie Imbruglia, and she's hoping a Hollywood career is on the horizon. With a start like this, I doubt she'll have to wait for long.