Roxy Hunter and the Secret of the Shaman, on Nickelodeon
Dolphin Entertainment; IMDb; Sony Pictures; Wikipedia

This is the second movie in the Roxy Hunter series, following The Mystery of the Moody Ghost. I may have been aware of it when it first aired in 2008, but I didn't manage to see it until 2015, on DVD. I think I liked it slightly less than the first movie, but it was still reasonably fun.

It begins with a scene of a boy walking through the woods at night, when suddenly he comes across a strange figure. I thought it was a bit odd that at first he seemed more curious than apprehensive, and then suddenly he was terrified and ran away screaming, when I actually didn't see any significant change in the figure from when he was just curious. But whatevs. Later, we see Roxy and some other kids at the library, listening to an author named Lorne Red Deer reading one of his Native American-themed kids' books. Roxy is a big fan. Meanwhile, the local bully kid from the first movie is talking to his friends about the kid who had been scared in the woods the other night, and what he saw. Some kind of swamp monster, supposedly. (Oh, right... I guess he was walking in a swamp, but it looked like woods, to me. I think the swamp was just in one section of the woods.) Anyway... it's summer now, so Roxy still hasn't started school, but she does have to attend "day camp," under the supervision of some older woman named Ms. Slaussen, with whom Roxy doesn't get along (Roxy calls her "Sauerkraut"). And Roxy often ends up ditching day camp to do her own sleuthing. Though she still does occasionally consult with the librarian, Mr. Tibers. Meanwhile, Susan and Jon are now dating, though Susan begins to have some anxiety about the relationship, because she's thinking about her late husband. Also, the two of them are in charge of organizing Serenity Falls's sesquicentennial celebration. And um... Ramma is working in a café. And Max is tutoring a cute girl named Jill in French. (She's listed in the cast from the first movie, but I don't remember her from that.) And he's got a crush on her, though she's a few years older. (He's 12 and she's 15, though I thought she looked more like 17, which I think is how old the actress was.)

Anyway... one day, Roxy meets a dog, whom she calls Swiftfoot. She wants him to become her pet, if she can convince her mother to let her have a dog. But before she can, she sneaks out at night to see the dog, and follows him into the woods, where she meets a strange old man who has set up... some kind of array of shiny objects... which is for a ceremony of some kind that he's going to be conducting on the same night as the sesquicentennial thing. Anyway, he just seems like a crazy yet harmless homeless person, but Roxy finds him interesting, and she tries to do research to figure out what kind of ceremony he might be planning on. And she determines that it must be based on an Iroquois legend, like something out of one of Lorne Red Deer's books. And she decides that the old man must be a shaman, and she wants to be his apprentice, though it doesn't seem like he's interested in teaching her anything. He doesn't mind her hanging around, but he's preoccupied with his own preparations. Meanwhile, the town's deputy sheriff donates a crystal for the sesquicentennial, which is supposed to be like the centerpiece of a sort of model lighthouse that's been built inside a gazebo. But before the day of the celebration, the crystal goes missing from the town safe. It's soon recovered, having been found in the possession of the crazy old man, who gets arrested. (Roxy had already found it in his possession, and was struggling with deciding what to do about it, but before making a decision, a search party found it. So when he got arrested, she came to his defense, not that her pleading did any good.) Of course, he was innocent of having stolen it; as he had told Roxy earlier, he had just "found it." And it was pretty obvious who the real thief was, but I don't want to get into that. It's... complicated and ridiculous.

So, um... there's a lot going on, but Roxy and Max eventually figure things out, and everything turns out alright in the end, for everyone. And then, as in the first movie, there's just a bit of a supernatural element thrown in, at the end. But that's not really important. Oh, and it does look like Roxy will probably keep Swiftfoot. And I'm not sure what else to say. It's just a cute, sweet, amusing movie.