Oh, Disney! Was the 1970's entirely spent making awful live action animal-based movies? I've been going through Disney Plus in Alphabetical order, and I must have seen ten already, and I'm still only on "B".
Benjy (Christian Juttner) is a young man, growing up on his families ranch in Canada. With little chance for human interaction, Benjy has formed attachments with some of the animals that surround the estate. One day he's fishing when he's overwhelmed by the river and swept away. His parents, Will (Carl Betz) and Esther (Salome Jens) desperately search for him and all but give up hope after several days without sign. Benjy though is OK, sharing a cave with a badger and sharing the food it brings back.
I mean, the one trait that all these movies seem to share is that they are staggeringly boring. This one in particular moves at a glacial pace and almost nothing happens. The river doesn't look like it's strong enough to carry a leaf away, let alone a child, but we'll live with that in the hope that it moves the story forward. The interaction with the Badgers, which you might anticipate would be a key element of the film is limited and much more time is spent with the family, fearing the worst whilst organising search parties.
I wasn't aware, going in, that this is based on a book, assuming that it would be like the other Disney films, where they filmed a bunch of animal interactions and built a narrative around it. Reading the synopsis of the book on Wikipedia, it's actually quite different from the film, and many of the aspects that sound like they might be interesting (the whole 'feral' child aspect for one) are dropped.
The performances aren't terrible, from the adults at least, and occasionally the backdrop is nice to look at, but it can't compensate for the absolute tedium of the story.
