There’s a simple, earnest charm to Irish director Nora Twomey’s transporting adaptation of 1948 kids book My Father’s Dragon, a welcome diversion from the poppy smugness that wears down so many animated films today. For all of Netflix’s many faults, the streamer’s versatility within the cartoon sphere has helped to elevate and distinguish them from studio rivals, where too often each new offering feels one and the same, tonally and visually. It’s allowed for smaller, less brash, films to peek through, each with its own unbranded personality and aesthetic and here’s a persuasive example of how that idiosyncrasy can work so very well.
It hails from Cartoon Saloon, the Kilkenny-based mini-studio that’s quietly insisted itself as a real industry force with Twomey’s previous three films – The Secret of Kells, The Breadwinner and Wolfwalkers – all breaking into the best animated feature race at the Oscars, nestled alongside the big boys. My Father’s Dragon is a less elevated, more kiddy adventure than those but one that still feels like much-needed fresh air.
Ruth Stiles Gannett’s adored source material frames the tale as a bedtime story being told by a narrator (Mary Kay Place) about her father, Elmer (Jacob Tremblay) when he was a boy. Forced by the Great Depression out of their local small-town store to the big city of Nevergreen, Elmer and his mother (Golshifteh Farahani) struggle to make ends meet. After an argument one day, Elmer runs away and follows a stray cat (Whoopi Goldberg) who suggests an unlikely proposition. If Elmer takes a journey to a magical island on the back of a whale (Judy Greer), he can find a dragon who will be able to help him make money back in the city. He agrees and after a stop for tangerines in the middle of the ocean, he makes it there to find a sinking island, a trapped dragon (Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo) and a cult of animals led by a gorilla (Ian McShane).
The strangeness of the plot gives the film the breathless quality of a fever dream, which can feel a little too jolting and scattershot at times, and is made that much more surreal by the parade of unlikely celebrity voices that crop up throughout. As well as the aforementioned, we also get Dianne Wiest as a rhinoceros, Alan Cumming as a crocodile, Jackie Earle Haley as a tarsier and Leighton Meester as a tiger (it all makes for unintentionally effective stoner viewing). While the plot can often feel repetitive and at its worst shambolic, the inventive storybook-comes-to-life 2D animation keeps us immersed, gliding us through an unusual and thoughtfully structured world.
Sweet, without being overly sentimental, and timeless lessons about the importance of accepting and admitting fear (something echoed from writer Meg LeFauve’s previous script for Inside Out) and how to balance independence with togetherness are smoothly woven through the chaos of it all and bar two discordant toilet jokes, it all remains refreshingly and unusually old-fashioned. A gentle film aimed at the younger end of young audiences that will also find the approval of those that much older.
My Father’s Dragon is now out in cinemas and will be available on Netflix on 4 November
