The collie that stars in the new Lassie film with co-star Jonathan Mason. (Reuters)

Lassie has come home again. The collie of book, film, radio and TV fame, returns to the silver screen ? not to avert catastrophe with her urgent barking, but to teach another generation of children about loyalty, determination and love.

Light on special effects and long on poignant lessons of life, the British-made Lassie premiered today at the Tribeca Film Festival. It is a retelling of Lassie Come Home, the 1940 children’s book by Eric Knight which was the basis for the 1943 movie that launched one of the most successful franchises in show business, including 11 feature films and a long-running TV series that now greying Baby Boomers grew up on. A poor Yorkshire family fallen on hard times sell their beloved collie to a wealthy Duke who wants the prized animal for his granddaughter.

The bond between the Yorkshire boy and dog is so strong that Lassie escapes and swims vast distances, climbs mountains and survives human dangers along a 500-mile trek home from Scotland to reunite with heartbroken Joe.

Elizabeth Taylor, an 11-year-old appearing in her second movie, Roddy McDowell, Donald Crisp and Elsa Lanchester, helped make the original Lassie film resonate with the public.

Peter ’Toole, 73, and Samantha Morton are featured in the new Lassie, set in Britain in the days leading up to World War II, rather than in rural American farm country where the collie’s 675 half-hour TV adventures were based.

“What drew me to doing it was reading the original book,” Charles Sturridge, who wrote and directed the film, said yesterday. “I was aware of Lassie vaguely as a child as a black and white flickering object in the corner of the room. The Lassie that I knew was an American character based on the TV series that lived on a farm and rescued people from falling down wells.”

Unlike the original, which was shot in California, the new movie is sumptuously filmed in England and Scotland. One thread that connects all the Lassie projects is Lassie herself. Every one of the long string of Lassie productions has featured a collie directly descended from the original canine star, a dog named Pal.

The new film was made with 8-year-old Lassie the ninth, and three other non-related collies, whose biggest challenge were in scenes swimming across Loch Ness on her way home.