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Adventures of Owen: A Review

The Adventures of Owen, written and directed by David Cadiz, is a short independent Canadian film about a little boy who has a huge interest in a girl in his class. It starts off in Owen’s  private school, showing him drawing a picture of a rocket ship and then imagining that ship going into space.

The sequence in Owen’s imagination is then shown through animation. The rocket ship crashes into —  supposedly —  the moon. The entire fleet is unsure of what to do, so the fleet captain sets out, only to lose his crew and meet a lovely alien lady. The movie goes back to reality, where Owen admires his picture of a female alien modeled after a girl named Lisa whom he admires. She’s talking with other girls about which guys like them and Owen tries to get her attention. Lisa ignores him and continues making conversation until class starts.

When school is over, Owen comes home to his mom and little sister. He decides to continue writing his imaginative story about the space captain on the moon. The captain trips over a little creature who takes his goggles. He snatches them back and continues after the alien girl, only to arrive in a place drawn in a completely different style. The space captain now sees a beacon in the distance and goes off to see what it is. The beacon rises up to reveal it’s the antenna of a giant robot that starts beeping. The beeping is really an alarm clock and Owen’s mom is waking up to another day.

At school, several other boy students are making their own drawings of Lisa and Owen, much to Owen’s enjoyment and Lisa’s annoyance. Later that day, Owen’s class goes for gym class, where they play dodgeball. Owen manages to duck behind several taller students thanks to his small size, but eventually gets hit by Lisa. Owen goes back to his drawing of the space captain, face to face with the giant robot. While the captain attempts to fight the robot, he realizes his laser gun is missing, and the robot squishes the captain with a projectile from a built-in cannon on its chest. The captain throws the projectile back destroying the robot and chasing the alien girl again straight into an underground cave. Another type of drawing style is shown, and the captain finds his entire crew trapped in a cage. The girl turns into a monster armed with a laser gun.

Just then, reality snaps in again, and we now see Owen looking over all of the drawings he has made. His mother gets home, and grounds him for not walking his sister home. After a while Owen decides to show his sister how his whole story goes. The next day at school, Owen gives Lisa an unflattering picture of her as a tentacled alien. Lisa is initially put off, but Owen doesn’t seem to care.

He goes back to his story where the captain and the giant monster are fighting. The captain hides behind some giant crystals which reflect the monster’s ray gun bolts, killing it. Finally, the entire fleet board their repaired spaceship while their captain decides to stay on the planet with the little creature he met earlier.

At the end of the school day, Owen watches as Lisa and the other kids take the school bus home. Owen is more content walking his sister home as he tells her how his story ends. This is a very magical and heartwarming movie. It combines live action and animation together, and it shows how bonding  between two siblings can happen over a fantastic little tale. There aren’t many movies like that.

The Adventures of Owen is available on Indieflix.

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