An old locomotive-hauled train heaves into a rural-halt-style station one summer morning and an optimistic, unprepared, broke family of five disembarks to live off the land. The children aren’t keen. “The countryside,” the oldest says, folding her arms, “have you gone completely insane?” Her younger brother clambers into the beat-up barn—their new home—and begs the incomprehensible landlord farmer for WiFi. The farmer beams, steps out, and returns with his wife in his arms. “Wifey,” he says. The three children can’t even charge their devices. “Where does electricity come from?” go-getting Dad, played by Andrew Garfield, asks. “It comes from plugs, doesn’t it,” his son replies. The film plays; the children crack; they stop deeming trees to be ”the most boring thing in the world” and sulking about the connectivity “disaster”; start running outside, and tumble into a series of adventures up, up, up above the clouds. And Mum and Dad learn how to grow tomatoes.
“The Magic Faraway Tree” (Palisades Pictures), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, is distinguished by the depth and commitment and giftedness of the vast supporting cast. Jennifer Saunders plays the nasty German grannie who “called Dad a loser.” “Unemployed!” she shrieks at her daughter—a line she delivers in the manner of Lady Bracknell’s “A Handbag!” from “The Importance of Being Ernest”—“Better say you’re in a coma!” Lenny Henry delights us with the Great Know-All. Even Judi Dench drops in (as a talking refrigerator; “Would you like some wine?” she asks Dad. “Not now, fridge.”). By its mid-point, the film has been catapulted—by characters painted well enough to grab our attention and memorable enough to be recalled, like tunes in an orchestral work that show up later—from mere fun adaptation (of a four-book series by Enid Blyton) to a whirligig of visual bonbons.
One night, a fairy and an angry pixie appear at youngest-child Fran’s bedroom window. They deliver an invitation to visit their home in the faraway tree. Angry Pixie sleeps in the crook of Fran’s elbow. The next afternoon she resolves to go. Part way up the tree, she discovers one miniature house for Angry Pixie. In the wall is a porthole that he can slam. Further up the tree, an open bulbous hollow, carved like a pumpkin for Halloween, lodges the other magic characters. It contains one airy window on each side, and a further opening connected to a long chute which returns visitors to human-land when their adventure is over (when their parents turn up).
A candy store perches upon the clouds. A cute, zany mix of the “Eat Me” scene from “Alice in Wonderland” and a set from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” wows the audience. Pink marshmallows float off pink-barked trees like so much pink magnolia in March. A man wearing an all-pink suit, “Barbie”-style, with a pink moustache, pink bouquet of flowers sprouting from his pink hat, repeats “no greed, there is no need for greed” like one of those female-voiced, computer-generated tannoy announcements at Montrose Station. Two other characters carry huge toothbrushes from left to right, as if brushing. “Beware decay,” they say. One character wears a flowing necklace of the kind of polo-shaped sherbet sweets that are normally threaded on a string and sold as a wrist bracelet. Flying saucers—usually found in jars behind the counter at Rosie’s on the High Street and designed to crush into the mouth whole—are imagined actually hovering like a swarm of candied drones. The whole set is pink and green and light blue and smiling.
“Bonjour bambini! Rise and shine! It’s a beautiful day in casa Thompson!” Mr Garfield luxuriates in his strengths. He is likeable and informal and gentle. He is a great believer in the nutritive power of Gregorian chant. “It’s good for the plants, they love it,” he says. He sings the “Family Song” over the end credits. Rebecca Ferguson relishes her role as evil teacher Dame Snap, a Cruella de Vil (from “One Hundred and One Dalmatians”) character known as Dame “Slap” until a school inspector insisted she stop hitting her pupils. Just watch Ms Ferguson’s horrified face as the children escape. Nonso Anozie is outstanding as “I am the wisest and most cleverest” Moonface; he has the best costume and a hairdo in the shape of a crescent (surely one authority or another will present his hairstylist with an award). Angry Pixie is the most pure-play comedy role. Hiran Abeysekera dazzles every time he appears (in one hilarious scene he practices his kissing skills on a sweeping brush). The actors speak with the kind of diction more associated with a stage play. How wonderful to watch a U-rated film (some movies are profane enough to make the audience’s head swim).
“Have we gone back in time?” Fran asks. The “Faraway Tree” books date from 1939 to 1951–wartime and rationing period in the U.K. It was worth the wait. The filmmakers are not reformers. But they do offer us a milkshake overloaded with a tower of cheeseburgers, a pastel-coloured-Rubik’s-cube cake, shell-suit-wearing cleaners rollerblading as they polish and dust and hoover, and a boy whose wish is to become a Minecraft character (with the unintended consequence that he can’t eat a slice of cheese pizza). During the decades that most of us grew up immersed in Enid Blyton, the kerfuffle about connectivity was a demon not yet born. We just read her books, secretly under the duvet with a torch, or more likely had them read to us. The pages turned themselves. She was the InterCity-125 route into reading (reading on the long train journeys from Montrose, alternating with the spectacular views, is one of the greatest pleasures of living here).
The first time that Fran encounters the magic she is confused. “You all live in this tree?” she asks her fantasy friends. “It’s amazing.” “It’s alright,” the Saucepan-Man says. “It’s a bit better than alright,” the little girl says, before bouncing up the staircase towards the clouds.
Adam Poole
27th March 2026
If you are interested in viewing this screening, please book your tickets here
