‘Lassie’ comes home to the multiplexes

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, August 31, 2006

The new “Lassie” is a pleasant throwback to a more genteel era of family films, with one new wrinkle: Lassie has turned into Jackie Chan.

Which is to say, Lassie has become very good at escape (at one point fleeing a captor by bounding across the backs of a herd of sheep) and hand-to-paw combat.

This new movie is based on the original 1940 novel “Lassie Come Home,” by Eric Knight. The novel was previously filmed in 1943 with a young Elizabeth Taylor, the picture that started the whole Lassie phenomenon. Sequels followed, and of course the TV show, which debuted in 1954.

By going back to the original, this new “Lassie” actually reminds us how many children’s movies today are either sanitized or heavily tongue-in-cheek. In this film, Lassie endures terrible hardships, another dog dies, and the family that owns Lassie is impoverished.

Perhaps you recall the story: A wealthy duke (Peter O’Toole, mischievous) offers to buy a pretty collie from a poor mining family. The family can’t afford to say no, so the duke gives the dog to his granddaughter Cilla (Hester Odgers).

Lassie, however, keeps running back home. When the duke takes his family up to Scotland, Lassie goes too. And escapes again.

But Lassie can’t possibly get all the way from Scotland to Yorkshire on her own. Right?

Ahem. Let’s just say she has adventures in front of her, including skirting Loch Ness and hooking up with a traveling puppeteer (gentle Peter Dinklage).

“Lassie” gets an intelligent, lush-looking treatment, thanks to director Charles Sturridge (he did lovely work on two Evelyn Waugh adaptations, “Brideshead Revisited” and “A Handful of Dust”). Along with the old-fashioned feeling, the film offers top-notch actors, including Oscar nominee Samantha Morton, who simply can’t give a lackluster performance.

She plays the mother of the kid that owned Lassie; John Lynch plays the father. Strong British actors, such as Edward Fox and Kelly Macdonald, pop up in the vignettes of Lassie’s journey. Lassie, meantime, appears to be unrelated to the long line of Lassies trained by the Weatherwax family, who always shepherded the dogs in the movies.

Because this movie offers stronger stuff than Saturday-morning cartoon fare, really little kids are probably not its audience. Adults, however, will find it easy to enjoy.

Jonathan Mason stars in “Lassie.”