Starring Latesh Patel. Rated general.

In Mystic India, narrator Peter O’Toole describes the country as a “place where the extraordinary seems commonplace”, but blown up to five storeys high on an IMAX screen, its ornate temples, towering Himalayas, and massive festivals appear very jaw-dropping indeed. This is a celebration of postcard India, with not a whiff of the squalor glimpsed in Powaqqatsi, Water, Manufactured Landscapes, or even a few episodes of The Amazing Race.

The film follows the legend of Neelkanth, a true-life, 11-year-old yogi revered in India. He left his home and family in 1792 for a seven-year, 13,000-kilometre journey around his home country in search of enlightenment—barefoot and without money. Along the way, he withstood everything from the biting cold of the Himilayas to the man-eating lions on the plains. But the brief summary of his trek becomes a showcase for the varied terrain of India and a people so diverse they speak 1,600 separate dialects.

BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, a volunteer Hindu organization that promotes Indian culture and its tenets of human harmony, produced the film and rallied its thousands of extras. Neelkanth’s tale offers ample opportunity to point out India’s undervalued contributions to the world (the concept of the number zero; the decimal system; and an advanced society that thrived long before the ancient Egyptians). And there are also warm messages about the country’s peaceful, inclusive faith. If the motives are nationalistic or self-serving, they’re inoffensively so: the journey is breathtakingly beautiful, and the boy character will draw even small children into the mystic magic that’s always surrounded India (although there’s at least one hokey scene with a butterfly that will make parents’ eyes roll).

Still, whatever the messages, the film works best as a travelogue, with sights so elaborate and exotic that they almost hurt your eyes. The hundreds of landmarks here are too plentiful and too remote for even avid adventurers to see in a lifetime. CN IMAX is selling this show with the tag line that India is “the one land that everyone desires to see”. Yes, this polished, picture-perfect paradise is the destination of dreams, but things may not be exactly as depicted, should you ever step off the plane in Mumbai or Calcutta.