I walked into this film with my eyes shut, that is I mean to say that I had no idea of where this one was going. On the face of it, animal life on a farm made for kids. The first few minutes soon got my intellectual capacities stirred up, and the strident tones of Saint-Saëns' `Organ' Symphony soon stirred up my red and white blood globules, such that my attention was unwavering.
`This is a film for kids' is simply an understatement; children will love it. However, for those of us with a few more years/quite a lot of years loaded on top, this story is a rather clever inspiring allegorical fantasy with just the right touch of `human' values and moral-making, such that no preachiness comes out of this tale. No, this is not an updated version of Orwell's `Animal Farm' and far from being a cinematographic creation of Richard Adam's masterpiece `Watership Down'.
Another thing which threw me off course was that on seeing genuine Border Collie sheep-dogs, my mind went rushing over to my sister's farm in Yorkshire where I spent last summer, and I can assure you that `Fly' (the feminine sheep-dog) is the double of her Border Collie `Holly'. So thinking we were somewhere in lovely Yorkshire (`nine months winter and three months bad weather' so the locals say), I took advantage in the first advert. break to crank up IMDb and lo, and behold! we are in my much loved Southern Highlands, New South Wales! Effectively, one of the very few (too few) panoramic views in the film gave us a slightly misty shot lasting a bare 3.8 seconds over to the Burragorang Lake, looking in a northerly direction, taken from somewhere a little north of Bowral and Mittagong, possibly Balmoral Village or from farther west near High Range on the Wombeyan Caves dirt-road.
Splendid photography. Even more interesting was Nigel Westlake's music, which at times was his own, but mostly were his variations on a varied selection of classical pieces. I immediately recognised the Saint-Saëns Symphony, but it is worth mentioning a little of Ponchielli's `Dance of the Hours' (in no way should rooster-calls be done away with by new-fangled alarm-clocks) and the Song of the Toreador from Bizet's `Carmen'. There were also variations interwoven rather cleverly on `Jingle Bells' and other carols, as well as other pieces I was not able to put an exact name to.
All in all, a nicely-constructed warming fable, with some very human oops! sorry animal values, such that children of all ages can get different levels of interpretation from it.
`This is a film for kids' is simply an understatement; children will love it. However, for those of us with a few more years/quite a lot of years loaded on top, this story is a rather clever inspiring allegorical fantasy with just the right touch of `human' values and moral-making, such that no preachiness comes out of this tale. No, this is not an updated version of Orwell's `Animal Farm' and far from being a cinematographic creation of Richard Adam's masterpiece `Watership Down'.
Another thing which threw me off course was that on seeing genuine Border Collie sheep-dogs, my mind went rushing over to my sister's farm in Yorkshire where I spent last summer, and I can assure you that `Fly' (the feminine sheep-dog) is the double of her Border Collie `Holly'. So thinking we were somewhere in lovely Yorkshire (`nine months winter and three months bad weather' so the locals say), I took advantage in the first advert. break to crank up IMDb and lo, and behold! we are in my much loved Southern Highlands, New South Wales! Effectively, one of the very few (too few) panoramic views in the film gave us a slightly misty shot lasting a bare 3.8 seconds over to the Burragorang Lake, looking in a northerly direction, taken from somewhere a little north of Bowral and Mittagong, possibly Balmoral Village or from farther west near High Range on the Wombeyan Caves dirt-road.
Splendid photography. Even more interesting was Nigel Westlake's music, which at times was his own, but mostly were his variations on a varied selection of classical pieces. I immediately recognised the Saint-Saëns Symphony, but it is worth mentioning a little of Ponchielli's `Dance of the Hours' (in no way should rooster-calls be done away with by new-fangled alarm-clocks) and the Song of the Toreador from Bizet's `Carmen'. There were also variations interwoven rather cleverly on `Jingle Bells' and other carols, as well as other pieces I was not able to put an exact name to.
All in all, a nicely-constructed warming fable, with some very human oops! sorry animal values, such that children of all ages can get different levels of interpretation from it.