Cinema: Merry Xmas from Uncle Walt

The Incredible Journey. Here comes Christmas, and with it an annual problem: what to do with the kids when the holidays start to drag. But don't worry. Good old Walt Disney has saved the day again, this time with a really charming little picture about pets.

Golly they're cute. Bodger, for instance, is an amiably rheumy old bull terrier who can hardly stand up to a fireplug. Tao, Bodger's best friend, is a maniacally active Siamese cat who seems to think he's a dog. Luath is a big, dumb, blond, delightfully floppy Labrador retriever who pals around with the other two.

All three belong to some children in northern Ontario, but they are staying in a town 250 miles from home while the children are away. Suddenly the Labrador heaves a sigh of nostalgia, sniffs the wind, heads for home. The cat and the terrier tag along, perhaps vaguely aware that they are going back where they belong but certainly unaware that in order to get there they must somehow cross some of the roughest country in Canada.

Somehow they do. The homesick hound relentlessly follows his nose, poor old Bodger staggers after him, and the cat, snagging a field mouse here and a partridge there, has the time of his lives. At last, after three weeks of battling bears, eluding lynxes and floundering in raging rivers, the four-footed friends come face to face with the jagged Ironmouth Range. "Oh, Mother," says Bodger's owner, a heartbroken little boy who has been getting fragmentary progress reports of the incredible journey, "there's no hope now."

Nonsense, son. Walt Disney has done some terrible things in his time, but it's safe to say there's one thing he has never done. He has never permanently separated a boy and his dog.