“Kensuke’s Kingdom” is a simply but attractively animated film based on a Michael Morpurgo novel.

The novel, in turn, is based on the classic tale “Robinson Crusoe,” here modernized to place a shipwrecked boy and his dog in tropical paradise, an island all but deserted save for a Japanese WWII survivor.

In subject matter, look and feel it’s a lot like those “Famous Classic Tales” — condensed fiction animated for children and shown on American TV in the ’70s and ’80s and repeated for years beyond that.

But while this British/Welsh/Luxembourg co-production shares the same simplified-for-children story and under-animated look of TV animation of that era, it features the voices of an Oscar winner — Cillian Murphy — and two Oscar nominees, Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe — as the adults in the cast.

Michael (Aaron MacGregor) is a headstrong lad stuck on a 44 foot ketch with his parents (Hawkins, Murphy) and big sister (Raffrey Cassidy) as the grownups have lost their jobs and decided “a fresh start” means buying a sailboat for a world cruise.

Michael is too young for responsibilities, or to have a say in whether or not the family dog gets to come with them. But he’s smuggled Stella onboard, something nobody else figures out until weeks into the trip.

Right.

The boy’s hardheadedness includes his reluctance to wear his safety harness, which is how he almost falls overboard, and after all that foreshadowing a storm whips up in the South Seas, he finally does, with Stella tumbling after him.

They survive without life jackets and awake on an island, marooned on a beach he can’t seem to reason or explore their way off of. When food and water start appearing before them in the mornings, they eventually realize it’s from Kensuke, a tall, skinny old man who speaks no English and can’t understand why they insist on cooking his sushi.

The island features dense forest, steep waterfalls and a widely-varied eco-system of wildlife including great apes, whom Kensuke has befriended. He lives in the standard issue Robinson Crusoe kids’ fantasy tree house, elaborately engineered and plumbed in bamboo in a Japanese fashion.

A faded family photo tells us of Kensuke’s wife and child, and flashbacks give away his story. He survived the late WWII sinking of his destroyer, his family back in Nagasaki did not.

Now he broods and hides from the world, with the island itself his only real purpose.

The outside threat to their paradise comes from poachers who’d love exotic birds and a baby ape for their sellable menagerie. The headstrong boy must learn caution, responsibility and empathy if he’s to get along with this stranger hellbent on protecting his “kingdom.”

The “learning” is soft-pedaled here as the script’s ambition doesn’t extend much beyond hurling a child into a “Survivor” situation with only his dog and a magnifying glass compass to help them survive.

Well, and their Japanese Robinson Crusoe savior.

“Kensuke’s Kingdom” is engaging enough for its target audience, and parents probably won’t mind explaining the “Famous Classic Tale” that Michael Morpurgo leaned on. Maybe plant a little bamboo in the backyard, because as Crusoe to Kensuke to Gilligan, there’s just no plante that’s more useful in a pinch.

Rating: PG

Cast: The voices of Sally Hawkins, Cillian Murphy, Aaron MacGregor, Raffrey Cassidy, and Ken Watanabe.

Credits: Directed by Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry, scripted by Frank Cottrell Boyce, based on the children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo. A Blue Fox release.

Running time: 1:24