In a picturesque mountain village in the Swiss Alps, a property developer named Schnaittinger is working away to convince the naive local inhabitants that his proposal for a new sawmill is just what they need to get their economy humming. In this inoffensive and ultimately uninspiring children’s animation, peppy little tomboy Heidi realises pretty quickly that this self-styled entrepreneur – sample line: “Machines can help us live a better life” – really only cares about his own profit margins.
Heidi and her friend Peter are given an added incentive to foil the bad guy’s dastardly schemes in the form of an adorable baby lynx that would be imperilled by the development of the area. The lynx is cute in that standard no-brainer kid’s animation way, with big eyes and a stumbling gait guaranteed to tap directly into the “preserve and protect” part of your brain. Unfortunately, watching Heidi unravel Schnaittinger’s evil plot is an exercise in well-intentioned narrative predictability. Various narrative curlicues such as Heidi’s outcast grandfather’s redemption in the eyes of the villagers and Heidi’s pen pal Clara showing up in the third act don’t add much jeopardy to matters.
The original novel from which this stems – Heidi, by Swiss children’s author Johanna Spyri – is about an illiterate orphan whose kind-hearted ways transform the life of her grumpy grandad in the Swiss mountains, and is one of the bestselling books of all time. It’s fair to say this film, which makes use of the same set of characters but is otherwise a new story, will not ascend to the same Alpine heights of popularity. Lessons such as “it’s better to be good than rich” are undeniably true, but adult viewers will find themselves wishing this dubbed German-Spanish-Belgian co-production had found a marginally more surprising or exciting vehicle for their laudable messages.
• Heidi: Rescue of the Lynx is in UK and Irish cinemas from 1 August.
