By Michael Fox, Special To The Dayton Jewish Observer

An unabashed crowd-pleaser in a DayGlo package, The Zig Zag Kid transports young-at-heart viewers on a magic carpet of charming hi-jinks and manic energy.

Belgian director Vincent Bal has transposed vaunted Israeli novelist David Grossman’s beloved 1994 coming-of-age adventure fantasy from the Promised Land to a candy-cane Europe. The result is a confection of a film that dispenses laughs and life lessons en route to a poignant moral about the blood ties that bind.

A family film that will most certainly appeal to children, The Zig Zag Kid is fueled by primal adolescent urges. Not the ones you’re thinking of, but the pressing need to comprehend the past, navigate the present and manipulate the future.

The Zig Zag Kid opens the JCC Film Fest on April 24.

The opening credits immediately set the tone in smile-inducing style, employing split-screens, a full-spectrum palette and a pop score to evoke the spy movies (and parodies) of the 1960s and ‘70s.

As his 13th birthday approaches, cute-as-a-bug Nono is starting to figure out he can’t abide the rules and conventions that most people passively accept. He’s not a rebel — he admires his detective father to the extent that he mimics Dad’s deductive skills and wants to follow in his gumshoes — so much as a creative thinker and fearless experimenter.

The title comes from Nono’s iconoclasm, as well as the gold pin in the shape of a Z that the world’s greatest thief, Felix Glick, leaves behind as his signature.

But I’m getting ahead of the story. After one of Nono’s bright ideas accidentally sends a cousin’s Bar Mitzvah reception up in smoke, our erstwhile hero is dispatched to boring Uncle Shmuel as punishment. But Dad’s plan is derailed within moments of Nono boarding the train, launching the lad on a mission that takes him to the south of France and back.

The Zig Zag Kid is tons of fun as it sets its inspired plot in motion, while Nono is a splendid protagonist who never devolves from endearing to tiresome. It helps that he’s aware he’s not completely self-sufficient, for that dollop of humility tempers his precociousness.

In fact, Nono relishes the maternal attention and affection of his father’s (ahem) live-in secretary, Gaby. The boy never knew his mother, who died when he was an infant, and he’d be very happy if the current domestic arrangement continued ad infinitum. Or, better yet, was sealed with marriage vows if his father could muster the moxie to propose.

But I’m getting behind the story. No matter. Suffice it to say that Nono crosses paths with the 60-something Felix Glick, who quickly presents himself as an alternate role model with his blend of resourcefulness and suaveness.

At a certain point, especially for those adults who have sussed out the relationships between the characters before Nono does, the pieces start to click into place, dissipating the film’s aura of cleverness. Everyone likes a happy ending, sure — although be advised a tragedy is revealed en route — but The Zig Zag Kid trumpets an allegiance to the primacy of the two-parent family that is downright Spielbergian.

Oddly, I discerned no particular insights into the lives, past or present, of European Jews. In the process of relocating the story from Israel to the Continent, Vincent Bal appears to have focused on preserving the novel’s themes and skipped the opportunity to allude to 20th-century history or current events.

One consequence is that The Zig Zag Kid could be anybody, and not necessarily a fully assimilated Jewish boy whose preparatory, pre-Bar Mitzvah entry to manhood consists of a unique and remarkable treasure hunt. He finds his mother’s identity, and his, and we get to go along for the ride. Not a bad deal for all concerned.

The JCC Film Festival opens on Thursday, April 24 with the screening of The Zig Zag Kid at 7:30 p.m. at the Neon Movies, 130 E. 5th St., Dayton, beginning with a reception at 6:45 p.m. The movie will also be screened on Tuesday, May 13 at 7 p.m. at the Little Art Theatre, 247 Xenia Ave., Yellow Springs. Tickets are available at the door and at www.jewishdayton.org.

To read the complete April 2014 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.