Whale Rider.

Today I saw "Whale Rider" for the first time.  I'm not a professional movie reviewer, and I'm pretty much as white as white gets, but I frankly disagreed with the DVD calling it a "funny" and "heartwarming" family film.  Don't get me wrong, I loved the little girl/main character.  The pacing was slower than I'd hoped for, but it had its good moments.  My main problem with the film was the grandfather's character.

A run-down of this character's actions: The guy shuns his granddaughter after her birth (because she's not a boy).  He raises her when her father takes off halfway around the world, trying to fix up his son with locals so that a "real" heir can be produced, and freaks when his son has taken up with another girl on his travels.  He tell his son to take the girl away (because, and I paraphrase, she means nothing to him), then flat-out ignores her when she comes back to the island.  His next move is to start up a Maori school for the boys of the village, trying to come up with a new chief in the process.  Not only does he exclude her from the male-only Maori training, even though she's just as good or better than all of them.  But when the boys in training fail to complete a task for him, he goes catatonic and KICKS HIS GRANDDAUGHTER OUT OF THE HOUSE.

This is the part that did it for me.  Could you picture that happening in any other movie?  "Gee, Gramps had a lousy day at golf today, so we're going to have to evict you, sweetheart."  Tribal heritage or no, this guy is a jerk.

Then in the last five minutes of the movie (due to events I won't go into here), Gramps suddenly has a change of heart, the girl is proclaimed the new chief, and all the problems that have persisted throughout the film suddenly resolve themselves.

Bleh.  Ebert gave it four stars.  It charmed critics and won countless awards.  But I'm not impressed.  What do you think: Am I completely miss the point of this flick?