MOVIE REVIEW : Little to Treasure on This ‘Island’

Too feeble for adults, too morbid for children, “George’s Island” (at the Westside Pavilion) is no Halloween treat and is the kind of inept picture that gives Canadian films a bad name.

This loser’s opening sequence, featuring Captain Kidd and buried treasure on an island in a bay in Halifax, Nova Scotia, graphically depicts a decapitation--hardly appropriate entertainment for little kids.

Moving ahead 258 years to the present, we find a nice 10-year-old boy (Nathaniel Moreau) living with his retired sea captain grandfather (Ian Bannen), who tells him about the island and how it’s haunted by the ghost of Captain Kidd and his pirates.

Inevitably, the boy and the old man are going to end up on that island for spooky adventures but not before some protracted and unpleasant nonsense about how the boy’s prissy, kill-joy teacher (Sheila McCarthy) has the boy wrested from his grandfather on the flimsiest of grounds and placed in a foster home of Dickensian cruelty.

Woefully underwritten by Maura O’Connell and Paul Donovan (who is also responsible for the film’s flat, uninspired direction), “George’s Island” (rated a lenient PG) would have to be developed and polished very considerably in order for it to be merely palatable, let alone fun.

It is scarcely amusing to watch McCarthy, one of Canada’s best actresses, struggling to find some humor in the dreadful teacher, and Bannen, one of Britain’s most reliable actors, trying to pump some bluster into the old salt.

‘George’s Island’

Ian Bannen: Captain Waters

Sheila McCarthy: Miss Birdwood

Maury Chaykin: Mr. Droonfield

Nathaniel Moreau: George Waters

A New Line Cinema release of a Salter Street Films production. Director Paul Donovan. Producer Maura O’Connell. Executive producers Donovan, O’Connell, J. William Ritchie. Screenplay O’Connell & Donovan. Cinematographer Les Kriszan. Editor Stephen Fanfara. Music Marty Simon. Production design Bill Fleming. Running time: 1 hour, 29 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG (violence, cruelty, directed mainly at children).