Part gentle coming-of-age story, part whimsical animal
flick, The Water Horse: The Legend of the
Deep tells the story of a young Scottish boy who serves as both friend and
parent to a mysterious newborn creature that he eventually has to return to the
nearby Loch Ness. Mixing live action and CGI, and anchored by solid
performances, the film seems poised for deservedly decent holiday returns from core family
audiences.
Utilizing a modern-day flashback device to frame a story and
pitch us back to World War II, The Water
Horse unfolds in 1940s
where young Angus MacMorrow (Alex Etel, above right) lives on a lake-set rural estate with
his older sister and mother Anne (Emily Watson), waiting on his father’s return
from the war. Not long after Angus finds a mysterious egg on the beach, troops
are billeted at his home, and Captain Thomas Hamilton (David Morrissey), a
blueblood soldier placed purposefully far from the frontlines, sets out to
impress discipline upon him.
Angus’ hatched discovery, though, proves to be a most
unusual creature — a pudgy, slug-like beast with expressive eyes, fins, a quick
chomp and a love of water. Angus deems him Crusoe and takes care of him, feeding
him potatoes and other odds and ends. But the loveable sea monster quickly
outgrows both trashcans and bathtubs, so Angus enlists the aid of handyman
Lewis Mowbray (Ben Chaplin, above left) to keep it a secret from both his mother and
Captain Hamilton. It soon becomes apparent that Crusoe is too big to live
anywhere but nearby Loch Ness, so Mowbray and Angus secret him away and set him
free. But with the army testing their equipment in preparation for a possible defense
against an attack by Nazi submarines, Crusoe’s future is anything but secure.
Despite being based on a book by Dick King-Smith, the same
author behind the source material for the hit movie Babe, The Water Horse curiously
isn’t exploiting that connection in its marketing. That fact, combined with a
lack of familiarity and/or cultural identification with the source material and
legend of Loch Ness, will likely help ding the movie’s chances for breakout Stateside
success
49, showed his touch with fairytale whimsy in 2002’s Tuck Everlasting, and also has trustworthy experience in another
period piece tale of a boy and his pet via My
Dog Skip, both of which come in handy here. Also, owing to its roots as a 1990
children’s novel, The Water Horse has
a solidly sketched backdrop of setting, and Russell and his team convincingly
create the chaotic adult world around Angus, which makes his identification
with Crusoe more believable and affecting.
It certainly helps that Etel, so arresting in Danny Boyle’s Millions, is the perfect sort of child
actor to hang a film’s appeal on; gifted with expressive eyes and an inviting
countenance, he exudes naturalness and an easygoing sincerity. One feels the
swallowed pain of his separation from his father, and wants very much to
indulge this adventure with him.
If there are knocks on The
Water Horse, foremost among them would be that Crusoe’s growth comes in
discrete, awfully big spurts; one good meal seems to cause him to swell and
double in size. Practically, for a budget, it may not be feasible to show the
creature at 10 to 15 different sizes, but these huge jumps in bulk and
dimension are distracting, even though they’re often featured for comedic
effect. Certain segments, too, including a dog chasing Crusoe around, feature a
needlessly goosed-up, cartoonish sound mix, which is out of step with the rest
of the movie’s adherence to practicality.
Tech credits are nicely polished all around. Bringing Crusoe
to life, the visual effects teams of Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, who
previously oversaw the effects work for The
Lord of the Rings, King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia, craft a
seal-like creature that actually undergoes some noted facial maturation — no
small feat in CGI.
Zealand
provides key exteriors for the MacMorrow’s estate grounds) are nicely
contrasted with cluttered interiors by cinematographer Oliver Stapleton.
Howard’s swirling score, meanwhile, gives the movie a nicely proportioned sense of
emotional uplift, hampered only by some desultory work in the aforementioned
dog chase sequences. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here.