THE WATER HORSE: Legend of the Deep Columbia Pictures
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: Jay Russell
Written By: Robert Nelson Jacobs, novel by Dick King-Smith
Cast: Emily Watson, Ben Chaplin, Alex Etel, David Morrissey, Geraldine Brophy, Craig Hall, Priyanka Xi, Joel Tobeck, Marshall Napier
Screened at: Sony, NYC, 11/30/07
Opens: December 25, 2007 Warning to parents. If your youngsters have been badgering you to get them a pet or two and you’re horrified by the idea of a few extra smells and stains in your household, you may want to skip this movie. However, if you’re not so neurotically rigid, if you’re not uptight around animals and do not believe that your apartment or suburban home should be a sterile museum, you’re going to love “The Water Horse.” Jay Russell’s picture, adapted by Robert Nelson Jacbos from Dick King-Smith’s novel about a lonely boy who takes care of an exotic pet—who more than takes care of him in return—is the year’s most lovable children’s story. It may not have the whiz-bang special effects of Chris Weitz’s “The Golden Compass” (though it points almost all viewers way up north and Weta Digital’s creation is nothing to sneeze at) but unlike Weitz’s movie, the characters are all down-to-earth. No pasty-faced Nicole Kidman types, no fairy with bow and arrows to pop up out of the blue to act as deus ex machina. Here are just some salt-of-the-earth, wholly believable Scots who speak a language that’s thankfully understandable to an American audience without captions--though that’s because many of the cast are British. A movie that invites comparison to “E.T.” centers on Angus MacMorrow (Alex Etel), a 12-year-old boy who is the son of a housekeeper, Anne MacMorrow (Emily Watson) living in a luxurious manor in a Scottish village in the midst of World War II. The boy’s father, who had been killed in the war, is an outsider, fearful of the water, both features shown as he stands apart from others of his age, fully dressed while potential pals are swimming and having fun. When he discovers a mysterious rock on the beach and peels it, a small creature, part dog, part giraffe and part who-knows-what emerges, he hides it in the bathroom, keeping its presence secret from his mom, letting its presence known only to his sister, Kirstie (Priyanka Xi—the spit-and-image of Emily Watson) and a handyman, Lewis Mowbray (Ben Chaplin)—who conspire with the boy to hide the fast-growing pet from others. When Captain Hamilton (David Morrissey) and his crew of soldiers arrive to take up quarters upon hearing that German submarines may be in the area, a potential romance develops between Hamilton and Anne—a virtually impossible situation given the British rules on social class—though a bond could quite properly occur between Ms. MacMorrow and Angus’s new friend, Lewis Mowbray. The water horse, which eventually grows way way way too big to be kept in the bathtub, must be transported to the sea, just as E.T. had to go home. Crusoe, as the Water Horse, is named, becomes the Loch Ness Monster. The story is straightforward, with a few flash-forwards to its narrator (Ben Chaplin), who holds two young guests in the palm of his hands in a Scottish pub, telling the story of young Angus to a couple who, upon seeing a picture of “The Monster of Loch Ness,” believe that the legend is only a superstition. As the movie implies, if Santa Claus, which some adults believe to be a fiction, is a real character, why shouldn’t the Loch Ness Monster be a real character as well? Some still say that the monster is merely a marketing ploy by the Scottish National Tourist Board to get people to spend some money traveling to the northern regions of Great Britain, but when you see this movie, filmed mostly in New Zealand, you’ll come away as much a believer in the existence of the monster as did I. Nowadays, the Loch Ness Monster allows itself to be petted only by its friends. They include, of course, the seventy-year-old Angus MacMorrow, who nurtured it from birth and who believes that Angus is its mom since he is the first mobile creature that it saw (the monster itself is hermaphroditic) and the kind handyman, Lewis Mowbray, who was a believer from the beginning. The monster remains an enemy of those villainous character who tried to destroy it, including those soldiers who mistook it for a German submarine and fired noisy, scary cannon fire at it, and a few fishermen who tried to haul it in but in one case he to cut the string and in other had their boat flipped over. So yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus; and yes, Angus, Argyll, Scone, and MacDuff, there is a Loch Ness monster, and its name, given to it by Angus, is Crusoe. Rated PG. 110 minutes. © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
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