Patrik, age 1.5

The simplest concepts are often the best, even for gay-film-makers. What happens if a male gay married couple in Sweden get permission to adopt a 1.5-year-old boy, but a clerical error delivers a homophobic 15-year-old to them? That was the hard-to-believe idea in Michael Druker's 2008 play, Patrik, Age 1.5, quickly adapted for the screen by director Ella Lemhagen.

She's specialised in movies about children, and she cast the movie very well. Tom Ljungman, a TV actor from his early teens, is charmingly obnoxious orphan Patrik for a few scenes, then becomes a charmingly lovable involuntary house guest with green fingers in the garden and good technique on a skateboard.

His new two fathers are a charmingly typical couple welcomed into their new suburban home by charming neighbours. One wink-winks approval for the active spouse (the one with a beard and an amiable ex-wife, of course) to have fun with his houseboy like he does with his Polish maid, which upsets the divorced father. His Gothic daughter is still resentful of her daddy, a state of angst sure to vanish by the movie's end.

Meanwhile, the passive spouse (the one who decorated the baby's room and fusses over bric-a-brac, in case an audience may not be sure) starts his first job as a local doctor, supported by a cheery, motherly and tolerant middle-aged receptionist and a fierce-faced female colleague who will surely blossom into an understanding friend warmed by the doctor's charming smiles and manners.

Even the local police and social workers are charming characters, so how could Patrik do anything else but reject their well-meaning efforts to find him new heterosexual adopters? How could he not become a charming, trustful young boy helping his fathers get together again, keep him, and promise him a pet dog?

The pun is unavoidable: how could anything go wrong in a fairy story? The conclusion is inevitable: this was a play and film designed to humour the suburban gay market. It's as charming as an overdose of white sugar.