A beaver family is peacefully working around their habitat, when suddenly disaster strikes: the dam is destroyed. White Tuft, one of the young beavers is swept away by the strong flood. As the mother and father beaver search frantically for him, he seeks help from an unlikely ally in his journey home...

Following the success of March of the Penguins and man's need to anthropomorphise the rest of the animal kingdom we have another story for your delectation, The Adventures of White Tuft. Before we go any further the story is about a beaver, so I want all those who feel like sniggering to stand at the back and get it out of their systems, as we will be talking about beaver a lot.

The Adventures of White Tuft (2008 - 1 hr, 14 min, 22 sec) is a Canadian wildlife film, aimed at a family audience, directed by Philippe Calderon from a script by Hassina Belkacem and narrated by Benoît Brière. For those of you old enough, the film’s sensibility has much in common with the innocence with which animals were presented in Tales of the Riverbank.

White Tuft is a small beaver who lives with his family: mummy beaver and sister beaver. As the seasons change we see the beavers maintain their territory and generally engage in an idyllic lifestyle, except for daddy beaver who gets his, courtesy of wolves, in the first five minutes.

Things seem to be going along swimmingly, with lots of interaction between the family and their neighbouring animals, until an accident separates White Tuft from his family, creating what is called mild peril these days. White Tuft, bereft of his family, is taken in by an old grumpy beaver who teaches him to be a more macho beaver, as nobody likes a weak beaver.

If you like beavers then this is the film for you. The story, although simplistic, is engaging enough for all the family to enjoy. There is never any real threats to scare the children and the whole thing is presented with heart. The cinematography is quite spectacular, including some seemingly impossible close ups of the animals and some nice sweeping shots of the Canadian countryside.

The film is presented with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 with a stereo audio track; the disc contains no subtitles and no extras. So, a nice little film for all the family, though the unintentional hilarity of some of the narration may have all the older males in the household running off sniggering to make cups of tea before the kids ask what was so funny.

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Charles Packer