Mark Reviews Movies: MY FATHER'S DRAGON

My Father's Dragon, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 10, 2022

The story of My Father's Dragon, an animated adaptation of Ruth Stiles Gannett's children's book from 1948, feels as if it's being made up on the spot. That's a benefit for such material, perhaps, since there's a sense of discovery that comes with every new detail, character, complication, and path on this adventure. The problem, though, is that the entire purpose of this story comes across as an afterthought.

Directed by Nora Twomeny, the movie is a production from Cartoon Saloon, the Ireland-based animation studio that's primarily known for its stories based in folklore and the geometric style of its art. This isn't quite a departure from the studio's established norms, of course, since the company is still relatively young and has ventured beyond the world of local history and myth before now, but still, Twomeny's movie certainly feels a bit different from what we might expect. Mostly, that feeling is a lack of grounding for the fantastical world where most of this story takes place.

That's unfortunate, because the opening scenes, set in some unspecified place and past of great uncertainty, are quite grounded. We meet Elmer (voice of Jacob Tremblay), the future father of an unseen narrator (voice of Mary Kay Place) but still a boy in this story. He's the son of small-town shop-owner Dela (voice of Golshifteh Farahani) with a talent for finding things and solving problems.

A big, unsolvable problem arrives, though, with an economic downturn in the town and, presumably, beyond it. Dela decides to pack up what she and her son have left, move to the city, and find a way to make a living there. For his part, Elmer naïvely dreams that the two will be able to open up a new shop, just across the street from the unfurnished and decrepit apartment the pair now call home, and things will immediately return to normal. Instead, Dela uses up the coins Elmer thinks they're saving to open the shop to make fruitless calls for a job, and a devastated Elmer runs off to come up with his own plan—whatever that could be.

As for how a dragon fits into this seemingly realistic and despairing tale, that's how the movie, written by Meg LeFauve, quickly starts to lose its bearings, both narratively and thematically. It all starts with a talking cat (voiced by Whoopi Goldberg), which Elmer fed some milk and now owes the boy a favor.

Goldberg, by the way, is one of many recognizable names and/or voices appearing as glorified cameos for the most part. Some of them include Rita Moreno as the strict landlady, Alan Cumming as a nervous crocodile, Judy Greer as a bubbly whale named Soda, and Dianne Wiest as a protective mother rhinoceros. Many of these characters suddenly appear and, to an equal degree, disappear before we get much sense of them or their purpose within the story, but it certainly makes for some transparent stunt casting.

Anyway, the cat tells Elmer the story of a dragon living on some faraway island. The boy thinks that, if he can find the beast and bring it to the city, he could make some money by putting on a show with the mystical animal.

Obviously, things aren't that simple. The island where the dragon lives is constantly sinking into the sea. The dragon doesn't exactly live on the island, since he's the captive of Saiwa (voice of Ian McShane), the gorilla head of a tribe of primates, who has imprisoned the flying beast to pull the island from the sea whenever the sinking becomes too much. This is a rescue mission for Elmer, and even after freeing the dragon Boris (voice of Gaten Matarazzo), the magical creature is a goofy, timid, and not exactly impressive animal, indeed. The character often comes a bit too close to being more annoying than amusing.

The rest of the story is a pieced-together adventure, with Elmer and Boris traveling the island, looking for an answer to the sinking phenomenon, evading Saiwa and his apes, and encountering various and random allies and foes along the way. Much of this is bolstered by Twomey and the animation team's strong sense of drawing style, which has the simplicity and ruggedness of a children's book illustration, and color, which is bold and bright. The movie's existence as a piece of traditional, hand-drawn animation—at a time when that form has all but been replaced by computers—must be acknowledged and cheered, too. This independent animation house is one of the few ones working in that medium on major projects, and for whatever shortcomings this particular movie possesses, the art itself isn't one of them.

In fact, it's probably the primary selling point for those who might find the narrative far too rudimentary, the central theme (about overcoming fear) too hastily and haphazardly developed, the characters too scant, and the tone drastically torn between the silliness of some of its characters and the apocalyptic undercurrent of a world about sink into the ocean. While My Father's Dragon is beautifully made and lovingly crafted by artists with a unique sense of style, there is—or, at least, should be—more to a work of animation than its appearance. In those many other regards and despite the obvious effort of its making, this movie comes up short, unfortunately.

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