“My
Father’s Dragon”
Movie
Review
"My Father's Dragon" is a 2D-animated
fantasy adventure film directed by Nora Twomey from a screenplay by Meg Lefauve,
who wrote the story with John Morgan. It is based on the 1948 children's novel
of the same name by Ruth Stiles Gannett. Voiced by Whoopi Goldberg and Ian
McShane, along with Jacob Tremblay, Caden Matarazzo, Coleshift Farahani, Dianne
Wiest, Rita Moreno, Chris O'Dowd, Judy Greer, Alan Cumming, Yara Shahidi, and
Jackie Earle Haley.
An invisible old woman tells the story of her father,
Elmer Elevator when he was a kid. He and his mother, Della, owned a candy store
in a small town but were soon forced to close as the townspeople moved away.
They move to a distant city and plan to open a new store there but they lose
all their savings.
Elmer soon befriends a cat and finally gets the idea
to manage the money the store needs, only to tell his mother that it's a lost
cause. Enraged, Elmer runs to the docks to be alone. The cat came up to him and
started talking to him. She tells him that beyond the city there is a dragon on
an island called Wild Island. Elmer takes on this mission and takes Soda, a
bubble whale, to the island. When they reach the jungle island, Soda explains
that Saiwa, a gorilla dragon, is used to keep the island from sinking, but it
is ineffective.
Elmer frees Boris, the goofy dragon, and as Boris
does forever, they go on an adventure to find Aratuah, the tortoise, to figure
out how to save the island from sinking for the next century. Be the "After
Dragon", but after Elmer rescues him, he can't fly due to a broken wing,
reveals he's afraid of water and fire, and they make a deal that Boris will
help Elmer to find enough money to buy a new store and Boris will be released
after the completion of the new store. Along the way, some of the island's
inhabitants, Cornelius the crocodile, the tiger brothers Sasha and George, and
the mother rhino named Iris, try to avoid Saiwa and his monkey army.
They soon reach Aratuah's shell, but Elmer finds her
dead as the island continues to sink. Resting in a flower, they are discovered
by Saiwa and his forces, and Saiwa reveals that he knows about Aratuah's death,
which infuriates Kwan, his macaque 2nd-in-command, who uses a giant mushroom as
a raft to escape the island, convinced that it was hopeless to save. While
flying with Boris, Elmer has an epiphany; Roots under the island pull it down.
He forces Boris to fly with all his might, Boris manages to free the island
from the two roots, but he suffocates in fear of the fire, and Elmer falls off
the island as he falls.
Saiwa rescues Elmer, revealing that he and the other
animals are leaving the island, and scolds Elmer for wanting to use Boris for
his own gain. When he learned of Aratua's death, he was afraid to upset
everyone more, and even more so when Boris came to save the island, Saiwa got
tired of his stupidity, so he lied and said he knew how to control Boris.
Wanting to make things right, Elmer returns to the island, where Boris tells
him he found a way to save it by jumping into the fire, and finally, he
explodes and magically lifts the island out of the sea, eventually transforming
into a dragon.
Boris takes Elmer home, passing by a surprised Kwan
residing over on tangerine trees. Elmer reunites with his mother and the movie
ends with Elmer embracing his new life in the city with his daughter narrating
the end of the story.
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