BUTTERFLY TALE (U)

★★★✩✩ A tenacious insect with a physical impairment that threatens to keep his dreams earthbound learns how to wing it in a lifeaffirming computeranimated adventure. CATCH A BUG: Directed by Sophie Roy, it Marty and best flutters through pastures friend Patrick previously pollinated by A Bug’s Life and Antz.

The tiny hero is a Monarch butterfly named Patrick (voiced by Mena Massoud), who only has one full-sized wing patterned with distinctive black and orange. He refuses to be left behind while his mother and friends make the annual migration to Mexico.

Consequently, Patrick stows away with caterpillar best friend Marty (Lucinda Davis) in the “all-you-can-eat flying buffet” of milkweed flower buds that accompanies the butterflies on their 5,000km odyssey south.

Screenwriters Heidi Foss and Lienne Sawatsky dispense wholesome lessons about teamwork, self-belief and the destruction of insect habitats to make way for out-of-town superstores.

It’s all punctuated by encounters with voracious predators including a toad, field mouse and three conniving birds.

Animation is crisp and colourful but the film’s technical limitations are evident during an ambitious tornado sequence with a destructive swirling vortex of air that looks disappointingly solid. Roy’s film at least gains altitude but don’t expect dramatic turbulence.