Only familiar in that I grew up watching the Japanese TV show Monkey and have seen a few other Journey adaptations since then (seems to be a new one every year or so). After watching this movie I feel like I need to read the book for the first time.

The sci-fi in this is really low-key, not so much wizz bang/hi-tech as humanistic Carl Sagany sci-fi.

It's shot in a mockumentary style and the characters are all a bit sad. I'm also not sure if the movie is punching down on all of them at the same time. Like I said in another comment perhaps I missed a lot of local humour and context.

I make it sound worse then it is. We enjoyed it.

Edit: it was also good to see 'Subtitles by SBS' in the credits again (like the old days before advertising). I feel like we've watched a lot of badly subbed movies on SBS the last few years and I was wondering if SBS had cut that department.