Kensuke's Realm audit - flawlessly exquisite activity of Michael Morpurgo experience - video Dailymotion

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00:00Oh have the new Children's Laureate, Frank Cottrell Boyce, adapt a book by former Children's

00:05Laureate Michael Morpurgo into a feature-length animation is surely to embark on an unsinkable

00:10voyage towards kids' movie greatness.

00:12Especially when the Morpurgo novel in question is Kensouk's Kingdom, published in 1999 but

00:18harking back to the swallows and Amazon's heyday of Summer Hall's adventure stories.

00:23Our young hero, Michael, has been taken out of school by his, in my view, wildly irresponsible

00:29parents to go on a round-the-world sailing trip, the family seem to have evaded the attention

00:33of social services simply by being so solidly middle-class.

00:37It's exciting at first, the old-fashioned sense of daring do further buoyed up by Stuart

00:42Hancock's sweeping orchestral score.

00:45But then a storm hits and Michael and his dog, named Stella Artois, a red flag, surely?

00:50are thrown overboard, later washing up on Desert Island.

00:54Michael and Stella are saved from certain starvation by Kensouk, an elderly Japanese

00:59man who was shipwrecked on this same island long ago and has learned to live in harmony

01:03with his surroundings.

01:05Kensouk wordlessly teaches Michael about this natural world, aided by Lapu's films' beautifully

01:10hand-drawn wildlife, which does much to convey a heartfelt environmentalist message.

01:16Eventually, Kensouk also opens up about his own wartime loss.

01:20An ink splodge is a memorable way to hint at the devastation of Nagasaki, without veering

01:25too close to the traumatizing, anti-war truths of Studio Ghibli's Grave of the Fireflies,

01:31or the panic-inducing plausibility of Raymond Briggs's When the Wind Blows.

01:35This is all nobly intended, with impeccable credentials and expertly crafted, but the

01:40fear remains that without the cute anthropomorphized animals and silly snark that's come to characterize

01:45the major studio animations, Kensouk's Kingdom, directed by Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry, will

01:51fall squarely into the category of films parents think their kids ought to enjoy.

01:56Still, congratulations if you've raised the kind of historically aware culture vulture

02:01who really can appreciate allusions to traditional Japanese ink painting.