An Unsticky Animal Fairy Tale

There’s something delightfully pure and fresh about the children’s film “The Adventures of Milo & Otis” (citywide).

This epic fairy tale about male bonding between an orange kitten and a pug-nosed puppy, refashioned from Masanori Hata’s Japanese movie “The Adventures of Chatran,” is full of clean sunlight and waving grass. Populated entirely with animals from Hata’s private island menagerie--bears, foxes and snakes as well as the usual barnyard assortment--it generates the blissfully dry sense of wonder the best children’s books or movies often do.

Hata creates a little world, as magically detailed as Oz, Wonderland or Pooh Corner. And he draws us into it, serenely, effortlessly--guiding us along a rushing river where the frightened kitten, Milo, is swept along in a runaway crate; following the puppy, Otis, as he chases along the banks; pausing quizzically over the antics of a fox, the stately stare of an owl and the relentless pursuit by a bear; lingering on the snowy forest that eventually imprisons Milo, Otis and their respective families. Then gazing out to the sea, as Otis stands stranded on a tide-lashed rock, ultimately rescued by a disgruntled but duty-bound sea turtle.

The basic story deals with the friendship of all animals, exemplified by Otis’s yearlong expedition to rescue his childhood companion. It’s an idealistic theme. Obviously, it translates to universal community among all species. Yet there’s nothing sticky about the movie’s visual execution. In its original Japanese form, “Milo and Otis” may well be a classic. And even in its shortened American version--with roguish narration by Dudley Moore, a bouncy score and a ricky-tick country-Western theme song that’s a real mistake--it’s engrossing, genuinely heartwarming stuff.

It’s certainly unique. Hata hasn’t used the conventional method of training the animals to perform according to a pre-existing scenario, tricking or teasing them. The animal actors, including as many as 30 roughly identical kittens or puppies pressed into service as Milo or Otis, were filmed in their natural environment responding to situations Hata and his crew helped create. This makes the movie the animal equivalent of an “improvised” drama like John Cassavetes’ “Shadows” or Henry Jaglom’s “Always.”

The movie is full of what Francois Truffaut called “privileged moments”: little jolts of charm or reality. One scene, where Milo and Otis watch a chick emerging from his egg and then nuzzle him as he stretches out, strikes me as a more impressive achievement--at least a more heartening one--than anything in “Batman.”

Hata worked on the film for more than four years, turning to one of the great masters of the Japanese cinema, Kon Ichikawa, to help him edit the unwieldly mass; Ichikawa’s title here is “associate director.” The director of “Fires on the Plain” and “The Makioka Sisters” is no stranger to animal or children’s films. He’s directed Topo Gigio, the Italian-mouse puppet, and another of his movies is an adaptation of Natsuke Sosemi’s “I am a Cat,” a Japanese literary classic from a cat’s eye view. He has strong affinity for the material and he helps give the movie a seamless shape and flow.

“The Adventures of Milo and Otis” (MPAA-rated G) is an unabashed children’s film, made with a wit and intelligence that adults can enjoy too. It reminds us that sometimes it takes the purest sophistication to see with an innocent eye. Just as Milo and Otis, drifting kitten and determined pup, learn that they’re not alone in the world--so, perhaps, will the children and parents who will see, and love, this movie.