War Horse (at the Paramount through February 24): It’s your standard boy-meets-horse, boy-loses-horse, boy-gets-horse-back tearjerker. What’s audacious about it is that anyone thought it would be possible to present a story about a horse in a war as live theater. To recreate the horse, and battle, War Horse is staged using elements from puppetry, graphic novels, documentaries, ancient Greek drama, and ballet. The result is that you’ll find your jaw agape at several points during the show: Simply put, you’ve never seen anything like this before. Which isn’t something you get to say very often.

Unfortunately, the lifesize puppets and multimedia are in service of an incredibly thin and juvenile story that would make James Fenimore Cooper blush. In my house I have a 12-volume set of books on World War I, but this play tries to condense the entire four-year war into two hours. Worse than that, practically every plot point relies on some unlikely coincidence or bizarre action. The characters are ciphers: We start with the Poor Drunk Father, the Strong Dignified Mother, and the Headstrong Youth, and move along to the Tough but Caring Sergeant, the Innocent Farm Girl, the Soldier Who Just Wants to See His Girl Back Home.

Perhaps this is intentional — it means that the horse is as well-drawn a character as the rest of the beings in the play. But for me and my lovely companion, it was incredibly unsatisfying. We agreed that instead of slogging through the story, we would’ve preferred the show if the puppeteers had just run the horse around the stage for an hour and called it good.

That horse is the reason to drop $23.75 and up and see this show. For most shows at the Paramount, I would never pay to sit way up in the balcony, where the actors are so far away they might as well be on TV. For War Horse, the puppet horse is worth the price of admission, and is large enough to be visible from any vantage point. Don’t even bother trying to follow the silly story. Focus your energy on the amazing work of the three puppeteers who animate the horse’s limbs, ears, and tail.