Just horsing around Young Angus (Elel) and his "friend."

Its better moments make one wish there were just a wee bit more unpredictability to The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, a big-budget Loch Ness kid flick with all the monster f/x, acting talent and canned faux-Disney warmth that money could buy. Only when it comes to originality did the filmmakers go all Scrooge McDuck and do without. There's barely a frame nor a line of dialogue that can't be anticipated, right down to the climax stolen from Free Willy. Making, this, what, Free MacWilly?

Material derives very loosely from a juvie tale by onetime farmer Dick King Smith, whose prose also inspired the much-beloved Babe. In modern Scotland (actually much of the thing was lensed in New Zealand), two slack-jawed American backpackers are told the "true story" of the Loch Ness monster, from an old man in a pub (actor Brian Cox, whose "surprise" secret identity can be figured out well in advance). We flash back to WWII, when Angus (Alex Etel) is the lonely, nature-loving little son of a Scottish laird gone MIA in combat.

Angus finds an egg by the water, and it hatches into a small, mischievous, dragon-like creature that he hides from his widowed mum (Emily Watson) and her new, threatening houseguests. It seems the family's mansion has been commandeered by British soldiers, defending against possible German submarine incursions in the loch. Angus names his baby beastie "Crusoe," after the Daniel Defoe literary castaway, and keeps the finny friend under wraps with help from his older sister (Priyanka Xi) and a war-wounded Scottish handyman (Ben Chapin). He says the creature seems to be a "water horse" of Highland folklore, of which only one exists at a time (film earns bonus cryptozoology points for also mentioning Loch Morar, a deep Scottish lake with its own beastie, Morag, who doesn't command as many newspaper headlines as Nessie does).

Sure enough, Crusoe gets huge, attaining Kong size in just over several weeks. Glimpses of the monster in the loch create a hysteria, and some of the bellicose British soldiers, with all their weapons and no enemy to use them on, make a quarry of the gigantic but basically friendly Crusoe.

When Angus goes for a stirring ride on the back of his water-horse pal through the aquatic wonderland of the loch (which, amusingly, is as crystal-clear as the Caribbean), the movie really takes off. These are the wet dreams all your monster-watcher friends secretly harbor when they scan Huntington Beach and Huron hoping to glimpse our own Lake Erie monster. Just sooooo much of The Water Horse just feels like it's going through the motions, the path already yeti-trodden by Harry and the Hendersons, The Iron Giant, E.T. or any other family feature that involves concealing a fantastical pet. Surely the youngest, non-cynical viewers who haven't seen this premise beaten to death will enjoy The Water Horse, and if, like most 8 to 10 year olds, they've already suckled on Braveheart's R-rated bloodbaths, they'll get the lingering English-vs.-Scots bitterness that creeps into the dramatics. (The intruding limey characters are aristocratic officers who have finagled a cushy assignment that keeps them safe from real fighting that killed Angus' daddy.)

The closing theme is sung by Sinead O'Connor. Tell youngsters she was bald and scary long before Britney Spears ever happened.