Tonight:
5°c
Derek Malcolm's rating
Old-fashioned horsing around
By
Derek Malcolm
7 Feb 2008
This is an entirely new slant on the legend of the Loch Ness monster. It has a small Scots boy (Alex Etel), who yearns for his father to return from the Second World War, finding and befriending a small "waterhorse" which grows and grows until it's as big as a small ship.
It loves him and he loves it. The problem is how to keep the secret from the soldiers who have requisitioned his mother's house, and are watching out for enemy submarines in the loch, and even from his mother (Emily Watson) herself.
The film looks and feels like one of those nice British movies from the Fifties with modern special effects added to bring it up to date.
Its best passages have the boy travelling through the loch on the back of the beast as artillery fires at them from the shore.
The rest is very old-fashioned and occasionally laughable. But Etel plays very naturally and the kindly monster is almost as sympathetic as ET.
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