A golden tale updated. (Now Playing).(Movie Review)

How do you extol the value of hard work and personal sacrifice to today's kids without boring them to tears? The same way Robert Louis Stevenson did in the early 1880s: by weaving moral instruction into a rousing adventure tale. In fact, why not just borrow Stevenson's original story, adding plenty of modern touches to keep things fresh?

That's what Disney has done with Treasure Planet, a free yet thematically faithful animated adaptation of Stevenson's classic adventure novel, Treasure Island. As the title indicates, this version isn't set on the high seas of the eighteenth century but in the vast expanses of outer space. Here Jim Hawkins is a scrappy teen who regularly gets stopped for speeding on his "solarsurfer," while Long John Silver is a cyborg with a mechanical arm. The reworking goes on from there, but the original story's intent remains.

The driving element of Treasure Planet, like that of its predecessor, is the maturation of young Jim (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Left without a male role model (his father abandoned the family years ago), Jim leads a restless, aimless existence that has him destined for juvenile hall. And so when he and Dr. Delbert Doppler, an astrophysicist friend of his mother's, discover a map to the legendary Treasure Planet, Doppler sees an opportunity for "a few character-building months in space."

Just what is the movie's vision of character building? An invigorating daily regimen of chores, and the demand that you respect your elders. The captain of the ship Doppler charters--a cat-like alien with the crisp, proper enunciation of Emma Thompson--demands that Jim pull his weight, and assigns him to work with the ship's cook, John Silver.

Silver puts Jim to his first true test, burdening him with endless tasks in the ship's galley. At first the boy protests, but during one of the few musical montages we see him dig in and do everything that was asked of him. Silver is so impressed he considers Jim to be an equal member of the ...