George's Island

Apparently "goddamn's" and decapitations are chump change on the appropriate-for-children scale since this 1989 film, which features these and more, picked up 1st Prize at the 1991 Chicago International Festival of Children's Films. The film opens with a daydream sequence in which 10-year-old George (Nathaniel Moreau) recalls one of his grandfather's old ghost stories: on a nearby island, Captain Kidd purportedly murdered his sea mates and left their dead bodies to guard his buried treasure. When George's elementary school teacher, Cloaca Birdwood (Sheila McCarthy), decides that George's home situation is not good for him (based on the fact that his grandfather drinks rum like water, and routinely greets nosy kids with a double-barreled shotgun filled with "saltshot"), she enlists the aid of social services' worker Mr. Broomfield (Maury Chaykin). George gets handed over to a pair of "foster parents" who make wine in their basement and lock the orphans into bedroom/cells. On Halloween night, George manages to escape, hook up with his grandfather, and the whole crew end up on George's Island where Captain Kidd and his crones come back to life. Director Paul Donovan's George's Island has some funny moments, but the relentlessly negative portrayal of adults and authority figures really makes it just another suck-up-to-kids movie with a few extra special effects. Too, you've really got to wonder where a filmmaker's head is at when the leading female, villain or not, is named "Cloaca." While the judges at the Chicago children's film festival have highlighted some notable children's films in the past, they missed the dinghy on this one. Not recommended. (R. Pitman)