From Netflix and Cartoon Saloon, the animation company that gave us the Academy Award-nominated films “Wolfwalkers” (2019), “Song of the Sea” (2014) and “The Secret of Kells” (2009) comes “My Father’s Dragon,” a 2D-animated entry based on the 1948 children’s novel by American writer Ruth Stiles Gannett.
The film is a trippy “Wizard of Oz”-like tale of a boy named Elmer (Jacob Tremblay), who runs away from his mother (Golshifteh Farahani) and the scary, big city where she takes him after their country store fails. Lured to a dock by an alley cat (Whoopi Goldberg), Elmer finds himself being ferried by a notably effervescent whale named Soda (Judy Greer) to a place called Wild Island. Elmer’s “real world” is reminiscent of Recession-era America. Wild Island is a tree-shrouded, artichoke-shaped multicolored wonderland, where a group of talking animals struggle to survive as the island threatens to sink.
Led by wise gorilla Saiwa (Ian McShane), the animals – howler monkeys, a rhinoceros named Iris (Dianne Wiest), a tarsier named Tamir (Jackie Earle Haley), a macaque named Kwan (Chris O’Dowd), a crocodile named Cornelius (Alan Cumming), a tiger named Sasha (Leighton Meester) and more – have captured a blue-and-yellow-striped, winged dragon named Boris (Gaten Matarazzo, TV’s “Stranger Things”). They restrain Boris to help keep the island from sinking by using his strength and wings to lift the island out of the sea. When Elmer recklessly frees Boris from his thick, rubbery binds, the two flee to seek out a wise entity named Aratuah in the island’s heights. Did I mention that many of the difficulties Elmer finds himself in recall his troubles in the “real world?”
