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If you've seen ET, Harry and the Hendersons, The Iron Giant or any other of the "young boy finds an incredible creature and hides it from grownups" genre, then you've seen The Water Horse: The Legend Of The Deep.
Put the Loch Ness monster in that template, place it in the hands of the director of My Dog Skip and adapt it from a book by the author of Babe, and you have 1,000 watts of heartwarmth amid the mist and heather.
Leaning from its first scene on an unwieldy plot device, The Water Horse: The Legend of the Deep opens in a pub where a couple of generic American backpackers enter and scoff at the legendary "Doctor's picture" of Nessie on the wall. Aye, the picture is fake, an old codger (Brian Cox) tells them, but the monster is real. Let me tell you a story ...
Which takes us to the Second World War, where a platoon of soldiers has been stationed by a loch in lonely and bored anticipation of a Nazi U-Boat attack (which despite the familiar Nessie picture, makes this some other loch and some other monster, Loch Ness being basically unreachable by sub).
Little Angus (Alex Etel) is a troubled boy, unable to accept the death of his sailor father at sea. He spends his days at the shore, picking up shells and such as a reminder of times spent with his dad. One such day, he finds a barnacle-encrusted egg, which he takes home.
Of course, the egg hatches, and a big-eyed CGI water lizard is on the loose, setting the stage for plenty of vase smashing, property damage and close calls as billeted soldiers and Angus' mother Anne (Emily Watson) narrowly miss discovering the cryptozoological beast as it runs amok in an absentee lord's manse.
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Angus' only confidantes: His sister Kirstie (Priyanka Xi) and the mysterious new handy man Lewis Mowbray (Ben Chaplin) who not only recognizes the creature, but shares "Water Horse" lore with Angus (only one of the creatures can live at a time, and it lays an egg just before its death).
As a subplot, Anne fields the affections of Capt. Hamilton (David Morrissey), the popinjay commanding officer of this pointless mission, while obviously becoming intrigued by Mowbray.
The pieces all come together in their neat, tidy way (and The Water Horse enters Free Willy territory) when Angus and Mowbray cart the voluminously expanding Sea Horse (now named Crusoe) to the shore to set him free.
Once there, he's available for fast-paced thrill rides (with Angus hanging on his neck) and vulnerable to shelling by the bored artillery gunners.
Clearly he must be freed to escape the submarine net that traps him in the loch or end up dead.
It all moves with predictable deliberation, with a revelation at the end that will be a surprise only to those who have been asleep through the movie.