The reboot features good performances, touching scenes and contains a welcome plea for families to put relationships ahead of political disagreements. The 2019 version of STORM BOY transforms a heartwarming story about childhood and nature into environmentalist political advocacy. It is based on an original novella by Colin Thiele, which is a staple of Australian children’s literature that had already been made into a well-received movie in 1976. REVIEW: STORM BOY is a coming-of-age movie about the special relationship between a boy living in remote Australia and the three baby pelicans he raises. INTENDED AUDIENCE: Older children to adults PRODUCERS: Michael Boughen, Matthew StreetĮXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Robert Slaviero, Geoffrey Rush, Christopher Figg, Robert Whitehouse, Justin Deimen, Sherman Ng I certainly appreciated Blowfish Studios breathing life into this tale, taking a modern approach to reinvent the story and making it accessible for a new generation, but it certainly did feel like this would be geared more towards children, or even classrooms for that matter, offering a new perspective on telling stories in a very light and interactive way.STARRING: Geoffrey Rush, Finn Little, Jai Courtney, Trevor Jamieson, Morgana Davies, Chantal Contouri, Erik Thomson Storm Boy is a refreshing take on a classic Australian story and in the 30 or so minutes I spent in this whistle-stop tour, I couldn’t help but wonder if I, or any casual game for that matter, would really be the intended audience for this modern retelling. The culmination does offer a touching message about the cruelty and sadness of life, even though some of the impact is lost due to the very quick nature of the game. But with that said, because the game did stick to the more notable points of Storm Boy, there were times when it did seem to skip over a lot of the pathos of the original story. Seeing Mr Percival do a waddle-run after you was strangely charming in its own way and while the sand and ocean can seem minimal at times, they’re lovely to look at and help to capture the isolationist vibe of the source material. I did appreciate the design and animation work of Storm Boy. The majority of these have little rhyme or reason and can seem quite random, and I suppose reading the book would provide more context, but I’d be telling a lie if I said that sketching naughty images into the sand with a stick didn’t raise a smile. A different game has you sailing about on a wooden raft and diving into the ocean. Percival as pelicans are, of course, man’s second-best friend. One game sees you feeding the three pelicans fish, another has you playing fetch with Mr. While these are all optional, with the exception of one segment that involves steering the pelican towards a stranded ship out at sea (although you do have the option to skip this is you fail more than twice), it is a nice and welcome distraction to play along. Moving across the beaches will prompt text to pop up, making the player stop and take in the story in small, digestible chunks, which quickly made me realise I would have to stop running past if I wanted to make the most of the narrative.Īlong the beach, you will also find a number of mini-games to play. The game adaptation of Storm Boy is a brief affair, picking up on some of the key moments told in the novel through a text-heavy approach. In the fifty-plus years since its initial book release, Storm Boy has been successfully adapted into film, audio dramatisations and stageplays and now, via developer Blowfish Studios, a video game. Percival returns, leading to an inseparable bond between the pair. Once healthy again, Storm Boy releases them back into the wild, but Mr. One day, Storm Boy finds three abandoned baby pelicans, which he subsequently takes in and nurses back to health, naming them Mr. In his story, Storm Boy and his father, ‘Hide Away’ Tom, live alone on the sandhills between a deserted coast of Australia and the Coorong, along with an Aborigine called Fingerbone. The bond between man and animal is a big part of Storm Boy, based on Colin Thiele’s 1964 children’s book of the same name. They grow with us, we learn with them and, without wanting to be too overly emotional to begin, they can complete us. We often love and cherish them above all things and our human hearts grow ten sizes seeing them reciprocate the same feelings, even if they can never say as such. It becomes more like a best friend, family and, whether we realise it or not, is always there for us when we need them. Whether it was a dog or a cat, a hamster or a goldfish or something else entirely, there is always a pet that becomes more than simply an animal. Everyone can remember a pet they had at some point in their life.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |