Independent Family Feature

One limited-release film opening Friday Feb. 27 is not only set to open in Grand Forks, but the only other theatres in the tri-state area to get it are one in Minot, one in Aberdeen, and three in widely scattered Twin Cites suburbs. And while booked into hundreds of small towns and suburbs across America, interestingly enough it is not scheduled for a New York or California opening, does not even show up on the booking charts of boxofficemojo.com, and has only sketchy details on imdb.com as a 2007 production with a February 2009 release.

The new full-length film “The Velveteen Rabbit” is aimed straight at middle-American families, and that is also how it is being marketed as aggressively as its limited budget will permit, for a theatrical run of less than one month before its already announced DVD release in mid-March.

The beloved children’s book (which is now in the Public Domain) has previously been made into short films and TV specials with varying success, usually all-animated. This modest but nicely done live-action version with animated sequences was produced and directed by Michael Landon, Jr. using a cast of unknowns, except for a few name stars who voice three of the animated characters. Landon also created a new story inspired by, rather than adapted from, the 1922 original by Margery Williams. The screenplay by Cindy Kelley captures the flavor and themes of the book well, but expands it to concentrate on the boy rather than only on the toy rabbit.

The book’s Pinocchio-like allegory of a toy longing to become real and learning about the pains and sacrifice required by love, serves as a parallel subplot to the film’s story of a lonely little boy, now named Toby, and acted impressively by young Matthew Harbour. Toby withdraws into a fantasy world with the stuffed rabbit his late mother bought for him, to make up for the lack of attention he gets from his workaholic father and stern grandmother.

Harbour carries the film, aided in the animated sections by the expressive voices of Tom Skerritt as the toy horse that once belonged to Toby’s father and Ellen Burstyn as a toy swan that once belonged to his grandmother. Jane Seymour, though top-billed, has barely a cameo as a cartoon fantasy of Toby’s dead mother. Kevin Jubinville remains rather stiff as the father, although to be fair, the character is written that way. Una Kay as Toby’s grandmother also starts with an overly mannered stiffness, but quickly loosens up as the plot gets going to deliver a moving performance by the end. Michael Sinelnikoff has some memorable moments as the sympathetic butler, Henry, projecting a knowing warmth that is not in his dialogue.

This version of “The Velveteen Rabbit” is the sort of G-rated film that is rarely made any more, one that is actually targeted towards general audiences of all ages rather than talking down to children and boring adults. There is only one superfluous scene, a rather dull musical number during one of the animated fantasies, that looks like it’s from a didactic and cheesily produced kiddie cartoon.

The rest of the film treats its audience like people who can think, unafraid to introduce potentially disturbing and depressing themes like that typical “family” films tend to avoid. These include such weighty subjects as dealing with death, estrangement, disease, unconditional love and friendship, fear of commitment, the power of imagination, kindness, understanding, self-sacrifice, and other personal issues. The film is also not afraid to tug at the heartstrings with the unashamed sentimentality that is inherent in the now deeper story that covers three generations of a family as well as three generations of once-beloved and later abandoned playthings.

The film sets the story in the early 1910s, although its situations are timeless and seem obviously directed at today’s preponderance of single-parent families and intergenerational problems.

Landon’s film combines live action (shot in Canada around Montreal) for the main plot with animation for the fantasy sequences. It cleverly blends computer-generated graphics with traditional hand-drawn cel animation, sometimes superimposed over the live-action footage. The computer animation is fairly basic but effective. The cel animation varies from quite impressive full motion to hastily-drawn limited animation, and while none of it would be mistaken for Disney, it is all miles ahead of typical made-for-TV animated programs.

For those considering merely waiting a few weeks for the DVD, the new film version of “The Velveteen Rabbit” will have a much stronger impact in a theatrical screening environment than it will in a typical home video viewing. The wall-size screen in a dark auditorium, along with some nice directional sounds in its Dolby Digital audio track contribute to a more immersive experience much harder to achieve with a DVD unless you have a good home theatre. One would hope that decent box office receipts and positive word-of-mouth might lead to an extended or wider theatrical release for the film.