Andre

Andre

There is a duck that lives on top of the Whitneys’ refrigerator, and a rooster that joins them for breakfast, and here and there in the house are frogs and dogs. But when Dad brings home a baby seal, their lives really take shape.

They live in a sprawling house up on the hill above the Maine fishing town where Dad is the harbor master, and people talk about them behind their backs. There’s a way that old-timers with Maine accents can say “He’s got a seal for a pet” that lets you know they’re not just telling you something.

The saga of the Whitneys is told in “Andre,” which is described as being “based on a true story.” I suppose another true story could be based on Mom Whitney’s thoughts as she cleans ducky doo off her refrigerator, but it would not be as heartwarming as this one, which is about how Dad (Keith Carradine) and the youngest daughter, Toni (Tina Majorino), cannot turn away the wounded creatures who come to their door. The little seal, for example, practically climbs into his boat after losing its mother, and when they bottle-feed it and name it Andre, it becomes part of the family.

That doesn’t sit well with a local character I began thinking of as Billy the Seal-Hater. Played by Keith Szarabajka like the ringleader of a prison riot big chest thrust forward out of baggy jeans Billy is a local fisherman who blames those damned seals for tearing up his nets. At one point he gets so worked up he chases Andre with a pitchfork. He also drinks too much beer and makes dire threats in the local diner, where all the locals spend most of their time discussing each other’s business.

Meanwhile Andre turns out to be some kind of seal. He goes through an obligatory health crisis early in life; nobody can figure out what’s the matter with him. My theory: As a wild animal, Andre has gone into shock after finding himself living in a bathtub in the attic. After he recovers, Andre turns out to be a fast learner, and is soon painting watercolors, blowing out the candles on his birthday cake, making raspberry noises at people he doesn’t like, doing the Peppermint Twist, and tuning the television (favorite shows: “Lassie” and “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”).

The structure of a movie like this based on a true story or not requires that there be a crisis every so often. So please don’t read any further unless you want to know that Andre disappears in January and is feared frozen. The seal is also nearly shot at various times, of course pitchforked; Dad Whitney spends hours tending him and other wounded creatures brought home by his family; Dad Whitney is not, truth to tell, much of a harbor master; on one scuba dive he finds an old explosive mine (helpfully labeled “T.N.T.”), and might have been blown up if Andre had not helpfully warned him.

At the end things get really bad. An older Whitney girl falls in love with Billy the Seal Hater’s son who suggests ominously that they can solve all their problems by “getting rid of the seal for good.” The two teenage lovers go off in a boat with Andre, and are seen by little Tina, who fears the worst and follows them in a rowboat about the size of Andre’s bathtub. A Nor’easter conveniently whips up right on schedule, it is a dark and stormy night, and Pop Whitney and Billy declare a truce so they can team up to save the tempest tossed Tina, whose little tub bobs biously in a large tank of dubious looking waves on the back lot of a movie studio.

Andre must obviously go away after this, and the movie comes up with an even-handed solution that is a masterpiece of fudging: He is sent to winter in an aquarium and then home to Maine for the summer season.

Movies like this are probably ideal for kids of Little Tina’s age and personality, its heroine, and I suppose kids up to some age will love “Andre.” But it doesn’t have the smarts of “Free Willy,” nor does it know when to stop; its series of cliffhanging crises is so relentless that we become aware of tireless screenwriters somewhere behind events, working overtime on what we realize should have been done as an overtime pay voucher for those involved in recycling that true story one time too often.

Watch Andre For Free On Gomovies.