Fitfully funny, but only just

Two by Two: Overboard! (G, 86 mins) Directed by Toby Genkel and Sean McCormack Reviewed by James Croot ★★1⁄2

It’s now 147 days since the Great Flood and life on the ark is about to hit a crisis point. Sure, they would have liked to have found land by now, but a more pressing concern is that the food is about to run out.

Head chef Dave has been pumping out 50,000 meals a day and believes his cuisine is the only thing that has stopped the animals from eating one another. But, as he’s had to stretch the meagre remains, the quality and quantity has dipped significantly.

‘‘If it doesn’t improve, it will be Nestrian l’orange on the menu,’’ Leonard the lion threatens. ‘‘Joke’s on him, we ran out of fruit weeks ago,’’ Dave pithily replies.

Things go from bad to catastrophic though, when a below decks accident sends the last of their rations into the ocean, as well as young Finny and Leah.

Aided by Jelly the baby jellyfish, the pair miraculously manage to stumble into an island. To their amazement, it’s occupied by a colony of Nestrians, albeit ones not keen for the rest of the world to discover their location. There’s also another problem, their home is built around an active volcano.

A sequel to 2015’s All Creatures Great and Small, known elsewhere as Two by Two ,ormy personal favourite Oops, Noah’s Gone, this Luxembourg/Irish coproduction offers fitfully funny, knockabout fun that will really only occasionally hold the sustained interest of its target audience of primary schoolage children.

Those hoping for a suitably biblical animated epic will be sorely disappointed. Instead, it’s an aquatic Ice Age-meets-Madagascaresque adventure with a message of trust at its core.

This is a movie where an eyepatched elder proclaims, ‘‘I’ve been blinded by my past’’, there are regular jellyfish ‘‘electrocutions’’ and the ending doesn’t really make a lick of sense.

Still it’s brightly coloured, and it certainly doesn’t stint on action.