Storm Boy

F you're going to remake an Australian classic it must be compared to the Original did anyone else get past the first episode of the recent dreadful television version of Picnic at Hanging Rock?

Storm Boy is 1000% Superior to that awful insult.

BUT!

After we saw this new version of Storm Boy today I watched the Classic Award winning 1976 version ,which I much prefer because of its beauty and simplicity and David Gulpilill's ( he has a brief cameo as Fingerbones father in the newest version) superb portrayal of Fingerbone Bill, which to my mind is watered down in this new version and in its place we have Geoffrey Rush's new character the adult and aged Storm Boy Mike Kingsley and the new plot line of greedy Corporate land grabs, my other criticism is not directed at Jay Courtney 's acting in the role of Storm Boys father Hideaway Tom it's just that he's too clean cut and nice compared to Peter Cummins rough castaway personality in the same role in 1976.

I'm not saying this is a bad movie ,it's worth seeing the cast is good ,especially Finn Little as Storm Boy and Geoffrey Rush is a fine actor but when I watched the original version I asked myself the question Does this new version add anything more to the story ? And my answer was the opposite I think it diminishes the indigenous spirit and atmosphere of the 1976 version and replaces it with a hard contemporary sub plot that intrudes on the integrity of Colin Thiele's original story and reminds me of the saying " if it ain't broke don't fix it..

I really loved this remake of the Colin Thiele classic. The film is moody, atmospheric and absolutely lovely to look at. The indigenous content is sympathetic and well done. Geoffrey Rush has never been better in my opinion and the young boy and the pelicans are nothing short of wonderful to watch. South Australia's Coorong looks just beautiful. I'm no critic, but I loved this film.

We watched this film with our ten year old daughter and were delighted with the message in it.

A wonderful film of grace, heartache, care and redemption.

It holds up the current concern for the environment and the importance of family relationships.

Beautiful.

It's a beautiful story. I was not expecting such a amazing tale.

It's about an old man who tells his granddaughter about a relationship he had with a pelican when he was a young boy.

Everything just lined up perfectly with the story. I especially love the score playing in the background.

Thought it was incredible that they were able to get these birds to do such good acting.

Worth seeing.

This is a really nice fictional story about a young Australian boy in the 1950s finding three new Pelican hatchlings on the shore after some hunters had killed a number of birds. He took them home and in spite of his dad's thought that they would die overnight, they in fact survived and grew to adulthood, fed hacked up fish. It immediately reminded me of the 1996 "Fly Away Home" where the girl finds Canadian geese eggs, hatches them, and raises the geese.

The other half of the story is in modern times, the boy as an older man retired from his company but still on the board, being encouraged by his 17-yr-old granddaughter to prevent a project that would threaten natural habitats. His experiences with the Pelicans all those years earlier will be an influence.

Good movie, speaks to friendship, family values, and trying to do the right thing. I found it on Kanopy streaming movies via my public library's subscription. My wife skipped.