Set in the snowy wastes of the Arctic, and featuring a cast of lovable animal characters, "The Little Polar Bear" is a kids movie with an ecological message and plenty of rather obvious lessons about making friends with people who are different. Which is fair enough since the movie's target audience are pre-school toddlers.

Lars (voice of Wesley Singerman), the short-ass of the title, runs into trouble when he becomes best mates with a seal pup named Robby (Brianne Siddall). Inviting his friend home for dinner (as a guest rather than the entrée), Lars discovers that his carnivore community don't take too kindly to strangers of the flippered variety. At least not until Robby helps his fluffy friend solve the mystery of the sea's dwindling fish stocks.

Relying on a series of cute characters and some beautiful landscapes, this adaptation of the book by Dutch illustrator Hans de Beer is certainly good to look at.

It may not have the whizz-bang graphical wow factor of films like "Treasure Planet" or any of the other recent envelope-pushing animated releases from the big American studios. But this German feature does create some stirring scenes, particularly during the underwater excursions into the Arctic depths.

Looks aside, though, "The Little Polar Bear" expects far too much from its young audience. Jumping from one plot strand to another without making much sense, the script combines Lars and Robby's friendship with a trip to Africa, an evil fishing trawler, and scenes of local Inuit life all in a tight - yet somewhat incomprehensible - 77 minutes.

While the supporting characters are great fun - there's some gullible gulls, a crazy penguin, and, best of all, a quartet of manically-depressed lemmings who are constantly trying to throw themselves off the nearest precipice - no one's going to think this is half as cool as "Ice Age".