This version of Storm Boy, directed by excellent Aussie small-screen helmer Shawn Seet, has the emotional heft and visual splendor to win the hearts of domestic and international family audiences.
It’s not a thrill-a-minute piece of children’s entertainment, but winning performances by young Finn Little, by Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush as the adult “boy,” and by Trevor Jamieson and Morgana Davies, lift it.
Storm Boy tries to present itself as a modern fable, where the lessons learned relate directly to present-day concerns over the environment, industrialization and the marginalization of indigenous cultures. But these themes come across as didactic rather than moving.
In the new film, by literally creating a bust of the bird – as if a clump of stone or plaster could compare with the natural majesty of wings and feathers – the meaning has been accidentally inverted: a story about how something can never die becomes about how it will never live again.