Little is a terrific find, with an empathetic performance that’s well beyond his years. It’s hard not to be taken by the blossoming friendship developing between child and animal. When the film remains in its flashback storyline, it’s entirely breezy and enjoyable.
But, as his father reminds him, they are wild animals, and a painful goodbye seems all but inevitable. Percival, who he develops a particularly strong connection with. As the young pelicans flourish and grow, Mike forms a close connection with his three new friends, even naming them Mr. Bound for certain death without their mother’s care, Mike rescues the chicks, determined to feed and house them back to good health. While wandering through some dunes, Mike stumbles across three orphaned baby pelicans whose mother was killed by local hunters. While Tom heads out fishing to occasionally use as barter for essentials, Mike spends his days exploring the nearby lands of the Coorong National Park, where he befriends local Indigenous man Fingerbone Bill ( Trevor Jamieson), who teaches Mike about the land, its creatures, and his spiritual heritage. When she accuses Michael of having no love of the environment, he decides to tell her the tale of his childhood and a time when “the world came to me.”įlashing back to the 1950s, young Michael (a wonderful Finn Little) lives with his widowed father, “Hideaway” Tom ( Jai Courtney) in a dilapidated shack on Ninety Mile Beach, far away from civilisation, which is exactly how his emotionally damaged father likes it.
But Maddy wants nothing to do with her grandfather, feeling deeply disappointed he won’t stand up to her father and stop the mining proposal from progressing further. His over-zealous son-in-law, Malcolm Downer ( Erik Thomsen) is desperate for the vote to be successful, despite the strong objections from his teenage eco-warrior daughter, Maddy ( Morgana Davies).Īfter a freak accident causes a delay in the board meeting and subsequent vote, Michael retreats to Malcolm’s lavish beachside mansion to spend some long overdue quality time with his granddaughter. Outside the building, Michael is confronted by protesters and a swarm of media, highlighting the public’s distaste for the plan. Perhaps that would have actually worked more effectively.īeginning in present-day Adelaide, retired businessman Michael Kingsley ( Geoffrey Rush) is venturing back into the offices of his company to vote on a controversial proposal to lease coastal land in the Pilbara region of Western Australia to a nefarious mining company. With the addition of an environmentally conscious message that’s as subtle as a sledgehammer and a completely unnecessary new framing device linking past and present, it’s commendable to see a filmmaker avoid the temptation to merely do a shot-for-shot remake. This is a heavy film without any thought or care for who its intended audience should be. Unfortunately, director Shawn Seet fails to answer that question admirably, with this rather bleak and monotone remake devoid of most of the joy and wonder that made the original such a beauty of a film.
Movie review storm boy movie#
But when the original movie is such a beloved classic, the necessity for such a re-imagining has to be questioned. In an age of remakes, it was all but assured we’d be offered a new version some day. For the last few decades, most Aussie kids have all likely found it as part of their mandatory primary school curriculum. It’s just a shame the film surrounding them is somewhat of a dud.Ī new film adaptation of the classic 1964 novel of the same name by Colin Thiele that become a highly-successful film in 1977, the tale of a young boy and his pelican chum has a long history with Australia. A pelican hardly seems the next likely evolutionary step in this chain of cute creature films, but in Storm Boy, you’re likely to find yourself captivated by these awkward birds. From the gutsy little pig in Babe to the tough cattle dog in Red Dog to those toe-tapping penguins in Happy Feet, it’s a long-running subgenre we Aussies do particularly well. Australian cinema has somewhat of an obsession with crafting adorable animal characters audiences instantly fall in love with.
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