'WATER HORSE' A PLEASING IF SENTIMENTAL FAMILY STORY.

Byline: >BY NATE BELL

"The Water Horse" is a gentle children's fantasy about a boy's love for a creature that grows up to be the Loch Ness monster, and it achieves the right balance of sentimentality and emotional toughness.

Alex Etel, the freckled star of "Millions," once again employs his introspective gifts as Angus MacMorrow, a Scottish lad growing up in the early days of World War II. Alone in his well-tended country home with his mother Anne (Emily Watson) and sister Kirstie (Priyanka Xi), Angus anxiously awaits his dad's return from a tour of duty. In honeyed flashbacks, it becomes abundantly clear that Pa's absence left a gaping hole in his son's heart. It's understandable, then, that when a barnacled egg hatches a tiny, orphaned critter, Angus eagerly assumes the role of surrogate father.

Resident handyman Lewis Mowbray (Ben Chaplin) correctly identifies the friendly beast (which seems pieced together from parts of a slug, a platypus and a stegosaurus) as a water horse, a mythical creature of Celtic origin. Since only a single water horse can exist in the world at a time, great care is taken to nurture the hatchling, which Angus dubs Crusoe. An extravagant amount of screen time is lavished on the boy's attempts to keep Crusoe a secret from his mother, which leads to several rounds of peek-a-boo and the umpteenth scene where a tethered dog is nearly strangled by its own leash.

The rapidly growing Crusoe is conveyed to the local Loch, where he spirals into a monstrous rampage after the Allied troops stationed at Angus' house fire at the creature. The temperate Captain Hamilton (David Morrissey), who stands to compete with Lewis for Anne's affections, refuses to give credence to the claims that the animal actually exists. For a while, the stage seems set for a grand battle between Nessie and the armed forces (or perhaps the Third Reich, which are talked about but never seen), but director Jay Russell avoids the temptation to end in gunfire. Instead, the overextended climax staged during a raging rainstorm dips briefly into horror, as benign pet transforms into fuming dragon.

Based on a book by Dick King-Smith, "The Water Horse" is the second above-average family adventure to be turned out by Walden Media this year (the other is "Bridge to Terabithia"), and its sensitively wrought story makes it fine fodder for Christmastime viewing. Even so, good sense dictates that this modest charmer shouldn't be favored over, say, last year's "Lassie," since it remains slavishly faithful to that same formula.

While certainly not within shouting distance of "The Black Stallion," the boy-and-beast film by which all others must be judged, the locations (Scotland and New Zealand) are abidingly pleasant, and the period setting is subtly and convincingly evoked.

Nate Bell is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer.

THE WATER HORSE - Two and one half stars

>PG: some action/peril, mild language and brief smoking.

>Starring: Emily Watson, Alex Etel, Ben Chaplin, David Morrissey.

>Director: Jay Russell.

>Running time: 1 hr. 51 min.

>Playing: Area wide.

>In a nutshell: Scary/sentimental children's fantasy is modestly charming.