Posted: 12/27/2007

The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep

(2007)

by Hank Yuloff

One of the most enduring legends floating around England is that of the Loch Ness Monster. In The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, director Jay Russell takes a book by Dick King-Smith and tries to explain it to us. It seems that, as legend has it, a water horse is the rarest of the rare animals. There can only be one at a time, and when they are about to die, they lay one and only one egg to carry on the line.

So it somehow came to be that little Angus MacMorrow (Alex Etel from Millions) found that egg at the time it was going to hatch and became the father/mother to a water horse during World War II. Angus, not knowing what this large oval egg is, smuggles it back to his house and when it hatches, begins to feed and care for it, hoping his mother does not find it and makes him bring it back to the Loch. But as everyone knows, when you feed a water horse, they tend to grow quite large, quite quickly, necessitating that very trip.

But Angus and Caruso (his name for the horse) become close and he is able to visit the creature in the water, by holding onto the horse’s neck as it dives hundreds of feet down. And when Angus needs air, Caruso seems to know when and how, so he resurfaces. So The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep is the story of how a water horse and a human became as close as Seabiscuit (pardon the pun) and Red Pollard.

This is the best kind of children’s movie: enough of a story for the adults to not feel bored out of their minds, and exciting enough for the kids that they don’t demand to see Sweeney Todd or Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. I would probably put the bottom age limit around 6 because there are some scary elements—war, explosions, danger to the creature. But there is a happy ending so you don’t have to worry about nightmares. In fact, this is such a heartwarming story that I kept waiting for Angus to look at Caruso and shout, “What, Caruso? Timmy has fallen down a well?”

Hank Yuloff is a film reviewer living in Los Angeles.

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