Old-school Arctic adventure a bear treat for young viewers

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This article was published 03/09/2015 (3156 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A couple of generations ago, the boy-against-the-wilderness movie was a staple product of the juvenile genre.

It has since been supplanted by the young-adult dystopian-survival movie in the vein of The Hunger Games or The Maze Runner. This is unfortunate if for no other reason than kids are more likely to see a movie set in a digital wilderness than a real one.

Despite its ridiculously generic title, The Journey Home offers a reality-based change of pace with a charming, old-school adventure.

With locations ranging from Churchill to Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, to the Norwegian island of Svalbard in the High Arctic, it’s the story of Luke (Dakota Goyo), a fatherless northern teen. He finds himself the guardian of a polar bear cub after the cub’s mother is discovered trying to break into Luke’s shed; authorities tranquilize her and fly her by helicopter 160 kilometres north to an unpopulated area.

Luke discovers the mother’s playful cub foraging for food in the shed. He appeals to Arctic guide Muktuk (Goran Visnjic) to help return the cub to its mother. When Muktuk proves predictably unco-operative, Luke himself takes on the task through the perilous Arctic landscape, where the melting ice and open water heap one challenge after another on boy and bear, while Luke’s mom, Madison (Bridget Moynahan), must brave the elemental fury of the Arctic to find her own errant cub.

If the juvenile-survival movie has fallen out of favour, it might have something to do with the fact that it tends to follow a strict formula.

Fortunately, director Roger Spottiswoode and screenwriter Bart Gavigan understand the redeeming value of such films is in the details, as when an unconscious Luke wakes up to find himself sandwiched between two Inuit girls who have resorted to traditional means to help treat his hypothermia by simply snuggling on either side of him.

Goyo is a capable and game young actor, but he — and, indeed, everyone in the cast — has scenes stolen from him by the polar bear cub, dubbed Pezoo. Borrowed from China’s Haichang Tianjin Polar Ocean World, the bear is a thoroughly enchanting animal, whether wrestling with Goyo or dancing on the ice with a youthful exuberance that, we’re reasonably sure, was not trained into him.

A far departure from the laboriously animated films targeted at kids these days, The Journey Home is as refreshing as a plunge into Arctic waters, but not nearly as unpleasant.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca