Coming-of-Age in ‘Courageous’

“Captains Courageous,” Sunday’s new Family Channel offering adapted from Rudyard Kipling’s novel, is a splendid coming-of-age adventure on the high seas.

Purists may cavil at the liberties taken with Kipling’s book. But this version, despite a major plot change and the deletion of racial slurs that reflected the prejudices of Kipling’s day, makes a little less free with the original than did the 1937 classic starring Spencer Tracy and Freddie Bartholomew.

Kenny Vadas (“The Santa Clause”) is well cast as spoiled rich kid Harvey, who, circa 1920, learns some hard lessons in character-building when he falls off a luxury liner in the middle of the ocean and ends up on a New England cod-fishing schooner.

Because returning to land with Harvey would mean sacrificing a season’s livelihood, the terse captain (Robert Urich) puts the boy to work alongside his teenage son, Dan (Kaj-Erik Eriksen), a seasoned sailor, to earn his keep.

As Harvey’s transformation from an arrogant, lazy brat to a hard-working, stalwart young man takes place, he becomes one of the crew in earnest, joining the harsh, rewarding struggle with the sea for its bounty.

Tragedy proves Harvey’s maturity and compassion and makes it clear that the lessons learned are lasting ones.

The cast is uniformly fine. Urich gives his stern, patriarchal role just the right amount of underlying twinkle, and Eriksen projects a comfortable boyishness that plays nicely off Vadas’ prickly Harvey.

Director Michael Anderson provides a skilled balance between the message and the exciting action aboard the schooner and its small fishing dories; the filming is terrific.

* “Captains Courageous” airs at 7 p.m. Sunday on cable’s Family Channel.