Magical animated 'Song of the Sea' deserves Oscar-and an audience

"SONG of the Sea" is an Oscar nominee for Best Animated Movie. It probably deserves the award, but beyond that, it deserves an audience.

"Song" is the second movie from Irish animator/director Tomm Moore ("The Secret of Kells"), and it has many of the same elements that made the first so good - superb, hand-drawn animation; gorgeous music; and a tone of quiet enchantment that is unique in modern commercial animation, so often a frenzy of noise, frantic editing and gags.

None of that means that I have any less love for "The Lego Movie," best of breed for animation comprising noise and editing and gags. If it were nominated, as it should have been, I'd have a hard time picking between the two.

But it wasn't nominated, and will have to console itself with $300 million and a vast following. If just a chunk of that audience could find "Song of the Sea" in its limited art-house release, well, then I'd say that everything is awesome.

In his first movie, Moore found inspiration from the illustrations in The Book of Kells. Here he draws from Gaelic folklore to tell the story of a boy packed off to the city to live with his grandmother, fighting to return, sister in tow, to his remote island home and to his widower father.

That's a prosaic summation - the narrative is richly embellished with faeries and witches, all used to complement the story of the emotional bond that grows between brother and sister in the course of their journey.

It helps to know, perhaps, that a "selkie" is a creature that exists as a human on land and as a seal in the sea. And though the creatures and characters in "Song" are drawn from folk stories older than the English language in Ireland, all is not entirely unfamiliar - not if you know from Tinkerbell or "The Wizard of Oz."

There is too little magic in animated movies these days, and "Song" reminds us that no one this side of Miyazaki does magic as well as Moore, who uses pacing and silence so effectively, and creates illustrations as stunning as they are charming.

Here he starts with the round designs carved into ancient stones, a motif of circles and ovals he plays with in endlessly clever ways. The story asks us to believe that ancient stones can come to life. Moore's artistry makes us believe it.