Storm boy finn little movie#

It’s the 1950s, and Mike’s life is wading in the shallows and wandering among the placid flocks of white pelicans. There was a tragedy that turned Dad into a hermit-like waterman, home-schooling his son, raising him on fish and whatever else he could scrounge up. That’s where young Mike (Finn Little) and his father, whom the locals nicknamed “Hideaway Tom” (Courtney) moved. It was called “Ninety Mile Beach” outside of Adelaide.

Let’s take a walk on the beach and remember “the beach I grew up on.” So let Maddie be late for school and the board meeting can wait. A storm and a taste of candy from his childhood put him in mind of a flashback. It’s up to grandpa to smooth troubled waters. She’s gone into “I HATE him” mode over the whole cynical “ruin the waterways and destroy their original homelands” debacle. Son Malcolm ( Erik Thomson) has upset his teen daughter ( Morgana Davies) with this decision. Rush plays a retired tycoon who has been summoned home to help his son see to a transfer of traditional farm (natural) land into hands that will develop it.

Storm boy finn little movie#

When you’re making a movie about children and animals, “Fly Away Home” is your template, not “Jurassic World.” “Dumbo” director Tim Burton learned that the hard way. The actors seem as tickled by these birds as we’re meant to be.

As we watch Finn Little and Jai Courtney (playing his father, and playing him well) interact with naked, featherless chicks and adult white pelicans, the difference between what digital critters don’t give you and the surprise and delight real ones do is a pleasant shock to the system. It was jarring seeing “Storm Boy” on the morning after sitting through Disney’s live-action (CGI assisted) “Dumbo” remake. 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.Īs do the birds. The new film is structured as a long flashback, a story remembered by the old man who lived it, its lessons worth passing on to a new generation. A beloved Australian tale about a boy, his pelican and preserving and respecting nature earns a sympathetic new telling in “Storm Boy,” which could be called a remake, a reboot and a sequel all at once.Ĭolin Thiele’s novel was most famously filmed in 1976, but has turned up in animated form as well.