Big Red

Disney has always done right by the classic "boy and his dog" adventure, and Big Red, adapted from the popular novel by Jim Kjelgarrd, is no exception. Wealthy sportsman Walter Pidgeon buys a beautiful Irish setter to turn into a champion show dog and hires spunky young Gilles Payant, a French-speaking country boy teaching himself English, to care for the dog. But boys will be boys and as Gilles and the setter run through forests, chasing critters and rolling down hills, Red loses all interest in show business discipline as he bonds with the kid. Pidgeon makes a gentle and understanding paternal father figure who grows to love the uneducated but hard-working lad, who grows from impulsive adolescent to courageous young man, but apart from a shattering accident that leaves Red near death, there's little real excitement to the lolling tale. Disney house director Norman Tokar proves more adept in filming the stately wilderness landscape than developing the dramatic possibilities of the script, but there's a charm to the innocent scenes of the boy and his dog at play in the great outdoors. It's a nostalgic world of blue skies, green meadows, rushing rivers of blue and white water, and mountain peaks shooting into the sky. What more could a boy and his dog ask for? --Sean Axmaker