DailyView: Day 213, Movie 300

On the 213th day of the DailyView, we have hit movie number 300. When I started back in April of this year, I did not expect to have watched this all the way till now and I did not expect to come anywhere near 300 movies. This DailyView has been something that I have been quite proud of and it has been challenging.

Thank goodness for HBO Max, which has been one of the best of the streaming services for available movies that I have not seen. Number 300 is on that site as well. It was a film dealing with a topic that I loved growing up, the Loch Ness Monster. I was always one of those kids who believed in and read about Nessie, Bigfoot, yetis, UFOs and other strange phenomenon. So this film appealed to me when I found it on HBO Max. It had been on my queue for a few weeks, but this fit into the schedule today.

Young Angus (Alex Etel), whose father was killed fighting in World War II on a boat that was sunk, lived with his family on the shores of Loch Ness. One day, he discovered an egg around the loch and he took it with him home. The egg hatched and there was a strange creature inside, a creature that Angus had never seen before.

Handyman Lewis Mowbray (Ben Chaplin) just started working for Angus’s mother Anne (Emily Watson) when he came across Angus trying to hide the creature. Lewis told Angus that he believed the beast was a water horse, a mythical Scottish creature and there is only one that can exist at a time.

Soldiers from the British army, led by Captain Hamilton (David Morrissey), take up residence in the castle where Anne and her family maintain, and begin to cause trouble. The dog of one of the soldiers started chasing the water horse, named Crusoe by Angus, which led Angus and Lewis to release the creature into the loch.

The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep is an enjoyable family film that takes your typical boy and his pet story and infuses it with humor, some drama, and a lot of heartfelt moments. Alex Etel does a good job leading the film and carrying on the relationship with the giant CGI creature. Never easy for an actor, Etel is very believable and covers the emotional beats well.

The rest of the cast is fine. I’m not sure why Captain Hamilton made such a swap midway through the film. He started off as a horrible character, but changed as the story progressed.

The CGI was decent. It may not match up with today’s level of quality, but for 2007, there was nothing that really stood out as terrible. Again, it is important for the character of Crusoe to be believable or else no one would buy into the story.

The story of Angus is told to a young couple by Brian Cox and this way of setting up a story works very well, and this time the trope benefits from the skill of Cox as an actor.

While it may be predictable at times, The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep is a fun family film that is full of adventure and heart.