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The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep
Rated PG
1 Star Out of 4

To paraphrase Roger Ebert, “the great movies are composed of great scenes.” Seems simple enough. Good (or even decent) movies may be speckled with brilliance, but searching for coherence is like pillaging the Jersey Shore for gold. The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, a fantasy for kids with an irritatingly long title, has no scenes worth mentioning.

Selling itself on the strength of the FX team from The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the producers of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, flimsy plot of The Water Horse relies almost completely on CGI. Unfortunately, I would have taken a Nessie Muppet over a computerized one any day.

The story’s pretty straight forward: lonely Angus MacMorrow (Alex Etel) stumbles across an egg encapsulating the titular water horse. Because the uber-creepy kid has no friends of his own, the CGI beastie becomes his only one and grows up to become, presumably, the Loch Ness monster.

Touching at times and riddled with bathroom humor at others, it’s somewhat reminiscent of a frat Christmas party or an episode of The Girls Next Door. But its sentimentality is so saccharine it’s like an overdose and it will leave you begging for Tylenol.

The baby Loch Ness monster – resembling a sickly, bald dachshund – isn’t as appealing as Spielberg’s beloved E.T. or as charismatic as A.L.F. Maybe the “it” should have gone with an acronym to score a few points.

E.T., send me home. Now.

We’re in the midst of the holiday season, so I can’t be accused of being a Scrooge; but family films are a hit-or-miss operation. Treacly sweetness can only be taken in good measure. Too much winking, self-referencing charm is a lot like staying at happy hour for five hours. It’s great at first, but after a while it gets nauseating.

The adult crowd needs quality double-entendre humor and some innuendo that treads the thin line between appropriate to ensure longevity. Maybe if Emily Watson reprised her role as a hapless nympho ala Breaking the Waves... now that would be a classic fairy tale.

The Water Horse is exactly as it title describes - a sinking stallion that ends up all wet. The cast of no-names can’t float a movie about a freaky amphibian with teeth whiter than most people I know. Even the narration, by seasoned thespian Brian Cox, feels both trite and over-bearing. Though little Alex Etel dons the Dakota Fanning acting boots (and pulls it off), he gives you the shivers. Charming, I guess, but in a Village of the Damned sort of way.

Anyway, ripping on kids’ movies is sad. I’ll quit while I’m ahead. The Water Horse lays a giant egg and unless you’re five or consuming certain herbal substances it probably won’t become a part of your DVD library any time soon.