★★½ (2½ out of 4)
Kid movies are in crisis. Even ones that see the problem with devices. “Toy Story 5,” the best of this summer’s family bunch, boos and hisses the army of pads and AI devices out there luring kids to the dark side where they don’t play with real toys anymore. Now “The Magic Faraway Tree” joins the hate group. That’s pretty funny since the author of the source book for the film, Enid Blyton, died in 1968 long before anyone had heard of artificial intelligence.
Blyton’s “Faraway Tree” books (there are four) have been adapted by Simon Farnaby, about whom you will not hear a hostile word from me, since he wrote “Paddington 2,” the best children’s movie of recent times and contributed to “Wonka,” Timothée Chalamet’s at least creditable take on Roald Dahl’s crazed candy man. But even Farnaby knows there’s trouble.
Let’s face it, Disney is wasting most of its time doing blah live-action remakes of its animated classics. Did you see “Moana?” I rest my case. So while we wait for the great Greta Gerwig to restore enchantment to the family genre next year with “The Chronicles of Narnia,” the decent though hardly dazzling “The Magic Faraway Tree” will do in a pinch.
It’s hard to forgive a family movie that decries the mind-rotting proliferation of screens being sold to us and our kids as a must to enjoy on—wait for it—the big screen.
In the hands of Farnaby, director Ben Gregor and a classy cast acting beyond the call of paycheck duty, “The Magic Faraway Tree” starts right in on the digital plague. The Thompson family at the center of film can’t wait to get out of London’s computer cloud cuckoo land. Mom Polly, played with welcome edge by “The Crown” Emmy winner Claire Foy, is royally pissed that her invention of a smart fridge (voiced by Dame Judi Dench) contains hidden spy security cameras. So she ups and quits.
Dad Tim (Andrew Garfield, charmingly committed) couldn’t be happier. He’s been itching to get his family with 3 kids out of urban dystopia. How to save preteen Beth (Delilah Bennett-Cardy) and her little brother Joe (Phoenix Laroche) and shy, near mute little sister Fran (Billie Gadsdon) when they’re all addicted to devices?
For Tim, the countryside is the answer. Why not go into the woods to create the Thompson family’s own brand of pasta sauce? The idea is in Tim’s dream book. The versatile Garfield, an Oscar nominee and Tony winner, will next star as Open AI founder Sam Altman in “Artificial,” an openly AI adverse biopic that fits right in with the Thompsons moving into a barn with no wi-fi.
The film veers between the family’s practical reality and the cringey magic that drives the plot forward. It’s the fantasy element that holds sway in this movie and knocks it off course. That’s when Fran is befriended by a fairy named Silky (Nicola Coughlan, terrific), who leads her to the ever-changing worlds above the treetops. Every week there’s a new world to invite us into. Fran soon entices her siblings into the loop.
The costumes and production designs really shine in these sequences, though the plot stalls frequently as the fantasy characters are introduced with an overabundance of whimsy that sticks in the throat; at least it stuck in mine. There’s Moonface (Nonso Anozie), with his poofy moon of a mug, Dame Washalot (Jessica Gunning) whose preoccupation is in her name, and Saucepan Man (Dustin Demri-Burns), who clangs through life like an over-active dishwasher. And there’s also a long-bearded, three-headed prophet known as the Great Know-All—voiced by Michael Palin, Lenny Henry and Simon Russell Beale.
Enter the villain in the magical realm, Dame Snap, played by Rebecca Ferguson with precious little screen time to develop an already thin character. That leaves homesick older sister Beth to shoulder the whining and complaining. She goes so far as to contact her citified grandmother (Jennifer Saunders) to rescue her from a world without wi-fi.
It’s hard to argue with the message behind “The Magic Faraway Tree.” Yup, families do need to relearn how to have fun with each other minus the devices. And families do need to find a stopper for the spout that pours a river of artery-clogging, sugary sweetness over damn near everything. There’s a fundamental contradiction that makes it hard to forgive the sins of a movie that decries the mind-rotting proliferation of screens being sold to us and our kids as a must to enjoy on—wait for it—the big screen.