‘Can I keep it, mommy?” It’s likely that even very small kids will smell something fishy about this family adventure from Iranian animator Mohammad Kheirandish. Like The Jungle Book at sea, this is the tale of a human baby rescued from drowning by a dolphin called Snowball and raised as one of the family. To try to explain the preposterousness of keeping a baby alive in the ocean, the dolphins are shown swimming him up to the surface for air every now and then. And to be honest, by the end of the movie, a human breathing underwater is the least of the narrative incoherences.

The baby, who fell into the ocean after the plane he was travelling in crash landed, grows up believing he is a dolphin. In fairness to him, there is a high degree of sameyness in the animation of the creatures: fish, dolphin, human, all have the same pop-eyed expression. The boy discovers the truth when Snowball blurts out the story of the crash. So with a locket containing the picture of his mother found in the plane wreckage, he goes off in search of her on land.

Some of the best bits of the film feel borrowed from better movies. There’s a funny moment of slapstick when the boy steps on to dry land for the first time, toppling over on legs unused to walking – a scene that might remind you of The Little Mermaid. His first experience of a restaurant, when he finds out what humans do to his friends the fishes, is right out of the Pixar movie Luca. Added to which, the lifeless, robotic voicework of the actors dubbing the film into English feels soulless and the storyline about what actually happened to the boy’s mother is mind-numbingly complicated. Owners of small children are advised there may be better fish to fry over the holidays.

• Dolphin Boy is in UK and Irish cinemas from 20 December.