My Father's Dragon

It's sometimes a bit confusing, but this colorful dragon fantasy is likely to entertain younger viewers. That said, the film's setup -- a child runs away from a loving parent, trusts a stranger's outlandish promise, and gets aboard transport to be taken to a remote location, where he forms a friendship with a magical dragon -- paints an awfully pretty picture of running away from home.

What's more, the story can be hard to follow and has some uneven messages about solving problems. After being encouragingly labeled "answer boy" when Elmer does use observation and logic to come up with a solution for how to solve the island's problem, it turns out that he's wrong: The solution is magic. And both Elmer and Boris have to blindly choose to do something that looks quite dangerous to achieve a positive outcome. Overall, the film feels less like a continuous journey and more a series of scenes that begin with a shout and are solved by food, candy, or a convenient occurrence. But Elmer and Boris forge a strong friendship and learn to trust both themselves and each other, and the animation is lovely, if perhaps not quite as impressive as previous Cartoon Saloon films like Song of the Sea and Wolfwalkers.