TL;DR – A movie that has good moments, but is hamstrung by its narrative framing device that was unhelpful and unneeded
Score – 3 out of 5 stars
Post-Credit Scene – There is a post-credit scene but not one you need to stay back for
Review –
When you grow up there are these touchstone moments as you discover the world
of cinema. For me, and I would say a lot of people in my generation that grew
up in Australia, the original Storm Boy
movie was one of those moments (well until you have to write an essay on it for
English, which was the worst. Well, it
has been many years since I have watched the original, so I was really interested
when I heard they were remaking it, well that was until I saw it.
So to set the scene, we do not start with the story of the pelicans, but instead, we begin many years later when Storm Boy
has grown into being an old man (Geoffrey Rush). He is back in Australia
because his son-in-law (Erik Thomson) is holding a vote to allow mining on his
company’s pastoral land. The old man’s granddaughter Madeline (Morgana Davies)
is very much opposed to it, but he is all just a bit ambivalent to it because
it is not really his business anymore. But before the vote could be cast a
storm damages the building and we get a day’s pause. It is during this time
that he decided to tell his granddaughter the story of when he was a child (Finn
Little) and he and Fingerbone Bill (Trevor Jamieson) found some baby pelicans,
orphaned after hunters killed their parents.
