The Impossible Elephant (2001)

Waste of time

Redundant and unnecessary.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The movie starts out telling us about Daniel's dead mother. It moves into "pet day" at the school. Daniel doesn't have a pet, but he does have a bully. The bully comes equipped with his own Godzilla music as he stomps in Daniel's direction. Daniel makes a wish on a star and in spite of his dad claiming it doesn't work, an elephant appears in his yard. It is one of those movie elephants that don't eat much or require a shovel. Daniel makes friends with Gilbert, the class geek as they both hide from the bully. The unreasonable dad decides they can't keep a baby elephant and donates it to the zoo.There is also Molly, dad's friend who is a mother figure to Daniel who is also a lawyer. She doesn't spend the night and do hanky-panky like in other kid movies. Gilbert takes Daniel to his underground secret "fort" which has cable TV. He gets the "Naked Channel" which he claims is like the Animal Channel, except with humans and it is "gross." This is perhaps the most questionable child aspect about the movie, that and hitting the bully with a large branch across the back. As it turns out the elephant is a savant and can fly. The elephant flies in front of the moon, reminiscent of ET. The movie has a happy ending as one would expect.Okay for a kid's movie, but there are better.

Young Mark Rendell is a lonely kid after his mother has passed away. His father Nicholas Lea and sympathetic friend Mia Sara try their best to fill the avoid, but Lea is working through his own grief. Rendell has nothing to show when classmates bring their pets into show and tell at school, one friend brings in a green mamba snake, fortunately with poison glands removed. He'd like to top that if he could.So when one morning an elephant shows up at the young man's doorstep and no one can find any trace of his origins, it's a puzzlement. One thing is for certain we can't exactly keep an unhousebroken elephant as a pet. It would require one big litter box.But this is one special elephant with some hidden talents that make him real special. He even splashes a bully played by Jordan Becker who has been making life miserable for Rendell and his friend Alex Doduk.The Impossible Elephant might better be entitled the implausible elephant because he's not really given any explanation for why he is and does things special. If Steven Spielberg had gotten a hold of this property the story would have all made some sense in the end.Giving a funny performance here as an overeager young zoo security guard is Sandy Robson. He's from the Barney Fife school of deputy sheriffs and except in Mayberry this man does not have a career in law enforcement.The Impossible Elephant is a nice concept, somewhat indifferently handled by the Canadian producers. This really needed a Steven Spielberg to bring it off.

The Impossible Elephant premiered at The Sprockets Children Film Festival in Toronto in 2001, where it won the YTV Silver Sprocket, as the audience's favorite feature film. The film never showed in theaters in the US, but it was later screened in Europe and eventually was picked up by Showtime a few years later.Directed by Martin Wood and penned by Robert C. Cooper, both of Stargate fame, Impossible Elephant is a charming film which explores Daniel's desire for a pet, and the unlikely fulfillment of that wish. For Daniel it's about believing in the impossible, and for his father Steven, it's about re-learning the need to believe and to look forward, not backwards.Nicholas Lea and Mia Sara, the adult leads, have a comfortable chemistry on screen, but the younger cast members are the real stars. The well developed characters shine in the manic race to save Lumpy, while they learn lessons about life, change and growing up.Though IE is ostensibly a children's film, adults will enjoy it as well.

This film went under the name of The Incredible Elephant when I watched it. Which turned out to be a little clearer in how the elephant was meant to be. The picture has an elephant in it, but not all the time. If you ask me, the elephant coverage was too much.With two quality adult stars having a 'friends who care and a bit more' relationship, I would rather have watched this story than the one about the elephant. Further to this point the relationship between the boy and his father was reduced in exposure to put in more chasing elephant and some odd bully character plot. Whilst this would bring the movie into the kids corner, from my point of view there was some high quality drama missed out on.This all results in an average movie failing to really excite the viewer. Maybe kids will like the child's perspective, and so the film will hit its mark there.