Kid flicks not child’s play

“Dreamer” seemed to have a lot going for it. A classic girl-and-her-horse story starring Dakota Fanning, the film was given a major marketing push by distributor DreamWorks and opened to generally favorable reviews.

“It’s the kind of film that generates tears and ovations,” critic John Anderson raved in Newsday. “Any girl (and a lot of boys) in the target age group,” wrote Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times, “are going to make ‘Dreamer’ one of their favorite films.”

Someone should tell them.

Six weeks into its theatrical release, the $32-million picture has grossed a so-so $32 million and has sunk into the box-office sunset. Earlier this year, “Duma” met a similar fate. That critically acclaimed story of a boy and his cheetah, directed by family-film master Carroll Ballard (who also made the box-office success “The Black Stallion” in 1979), was released by Warner Bros. in New York, Los Angeles and a handful of other cities. It received almost no marketing support from the studio and disappeared practically overnight.

“Two Brothers,” the story of a boy and sibling tigers from director Jean-Jacques Annaud (“The Bear”), grossed a meager $18.9 million last year. And “Because of Winn-Dixie,” featuring a girl and her dog and based on a popular children’s novel, took in a disappointing $32.6 million when it was released in February.

Don’t kids like puppies and kittens anymore?

At a time when computer-generated extravaganzas like “Spider-Man 2,” the “Harry Potter” films, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and even the animatronic-enhanced “Babe” dazzle kiddies and parents alike, films featuring cute, live animals and their human friends can’t quite compete.

“These pictures are tough sells,” says Brandon Gray, who runs Box Office Mojo, a website that tracks theatrical receipts. “They need word of mouth to find an audience, and in today’s theatrical climate, most movies don’t have that time -- theatrical life span is short.”

The interspecies drama, once a studio staple, has fallen on hard times.

It wasn’t always this way. Back when many of the big studio execs were still in grade school, films like “My Friend Flicka” and “Old Yeller” flooded the theaters. Lassie and Rin-Tin-Tin were once major film and TV stars. Later, the cute-dog drama “Benji” would hit big: The 1974 flick grossed $130 million, in 2005 dollars; “The Black Stallion” (1979) earned $107 million, and 1993’s “Free Willy,” the boy-and-his-orca hit, grossed an impressive $102 million (also in 2005 dollars).

But that was then. Today, “pop culture has moved away from the innocence of childhood and has given way to a more aware, cynical idea of what it is to be a child,” adds Eric Beckman, director of the New York International Children’s Film Festival.

“It’s hard on the marketing side to play into the innocence of a story like ‘Dreamer’ -- a girl’s relationship with a horse,” he says, “because what tends to work is more humorous and fast-paced.”

Youthful audiences are more interested in animated features like “The Incredibles” and fantasy films in the “Harry Potter” mold. Some also feel kid-and-animal pictures suffer from moldy plot lines.

“It’s the same thing over and over,” says Maddie Rita, a 9-year-old writer for Whose Magazine?, a Denver-based publication written and edited by children. “Kids are interested in something different and something new, and what they get is the same basic plot [in kid-and-animal movies].”

“We want to see something we wish could happen,” adds Alante Thalley, a 13-year-old film critic for the same outlet. “You don’t want to see something you’ve already seen before. You want to be able to use your imagination. Kids are interested in the special effects and the bright colors.”

In other words, nothing like “Benji.”

“They’re not accustomed to slower-paced movies with more of a story line,” says Ranny Levy, president of the Coalition for Quality Children’s Media. “We have created a culture that, because of the TV programming we expose children to, it infuses this idea of a very high level of action.”

What about “March of the Penguins”? The documentary has taken in more than $75 million, but observers caution that the audience skewed older, and, as Gray told USA Today, the picture was an anomaly, “an unprecedented look at a real-life phenomenon.” Kids do watch nature channels like Animal Planet and Discovery, but, Levy says, animal-and-kid movies “are a different genre from what you see on these channels. These are stories. I don’t think you can compare them.”

Margaret Loesch, the founding chief executive of Fox Kids Network, who now runs the Hatchery, a production company making family-oriented features, believes that part of the problem is the studios themselves, which are “set up as big factories. The only thing that makes sense to them is they do big movies. They’re tapping into what kids respond to when kids go home and play video games, the action-fantasy genre.”

So what does this mean for kid-and-animal films in the pipeline, such as the new versions of “Lassie” and “Flicka”? There is plenty of cause for hope, it turns out. Loesch says these films do steady, if unspectacular, business when they’re released on DVD.

“Kids will not tell you they like something if it’s deemed not hip by their peers,” she says, “but at home they will watch a small picture with animals.”

That seems obvious: “Air Bud,” a 1997 feature about a basketball-playing dog, which grossed a modest $25 million, has spawned four sequels; two of them went direct to video.

Loesch also believes that the makers of kids’ films, knowing they probably won’t get a big promotional push or huge box-office receipts, are starting to look at a theatrical release solely as a promotional opportunity for home video.

“That’s what you will see emerging for these smaller children’s films,” she says. “You will get exhibition in selected markets, or just a few theaters in a lot of markets, then get business on DVD. There’s only so much room at the theater. This genre will work, but it’s finding a place where it will work.”

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This article originally appeared in Newsday.