This movie has marvelous special effects that are very realistic. The story was easy to follow although having read the book proved very helpful to our third grade son, who got more out of the movie than we did. He was explaining some things to us after the movie that we "missed" by not having read the book. My only suggestion would be to shorten the length a bit, but there was a lot of storyline and information to cover, so it may not be possible.