To have the new children’s laureate, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, adapt a book by former children’s laureate Michael Morpurgo into a feature-length animation is surely to embark on an unsinkable voyage towards kids’ movie greatness. Especially when the Morpurgo novel in question is Kensuke’s Kingdom, published in 1999 but harking back to the Swallows and Amazons heyday of summer hols adventure stories.
Our young hero, Michael, has been taken out of school by his, in my view, wildly irresponsible parents to go on a round-the-world sailing trip (the family seem to have evaded the attention of social services simply by being so solidly middle class). It’s exciting at first; the old-fashioned sense of derring-do further buoyed up by Stuart Hancock’s sweeping orchestral score. But then a storm hits and Michael and his dog, named Stella Artois – a red flag, surely? – are thrown overboard, later washing up on desert island.
