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With Hollywood abandoning traditional line-drawn animation in favour of its hi-tech computerised cousin, there's something reassuringly old-fashioned about The Little Polar Bear: The Mysterious Island. But even the most tolerant of tots will find little of merit in this toothless follow-up to the 2003 German cartoon, which sees Hans de Beer's boring ursine hero journey from the Arctic Circle to the Galapagos Islands for some far-fetched antics involving baby turtles, an erupting volcano and a prehistoric fish.

The first Little Polar Bear was a haphazard affair that resembled nothing so much as three episodes from the 1990s TV series that spawned it shackled together. Learning their lesson, co-directors Thilo Graf Rothkirch and Piet De Rycker have fashioned a more streamlined narrative this time around, albeit one peppered with baffling subplots and nonsensical dialogue that suggest something has definitely got lost in translation.

"LIKE A LO-FI MADAGASCAR"

For the most part, though, the film holds together well enough as Lars the bear, his pal Robby the seal and Caruso the warbling penguin find themselves shipped off to the Pacific archipelago, there to help the local fauna cope with threats foreign and domestic. When not peddling eco-friendly truisms with a pronounced Darwinian slant, the four-strong writing team throw in some so-so comic relief involving a pair of bumbling American explorers and a quartet of suicidal lemmings who speak in broad Scouse accents. For all that, the anaemic result still feels like a lo-fi Madagascar that really shouldn't be inflicted on anybody old enough to tie their own shoelaces.