By Dan Skip Allen 

There have been a lot of book series that have been adapted into films. Some of them are better than others. When a director does it right the first time, it could spawn a franchise similar to “The Hunger Games” or “Twilight”. The latest film to be adapted from a book series is “The Magic Faraway Tree” from the author Enid Blyton. It’s a book series I hadn’t heard of before seeing the film, which is good for me because I didn’t have any preconceived notions before seeing it. I usually like these young adult types of books to movie adaptations, so when I saw this one, I was glad that the trend continued. It’s a sweet family film with as the title suggests a hint of fantasy thrown in. 

The Thompson Family, Tim (Andrew Garfield), Polly (Claire Foy) 1 boy, Joe (Phoenix Laroche) 2 girls, Fran (Billie Gadsdon) & Beth (Delilah Bennett-Cardy) are a family from England who move to a sleepy country cottage. It’s a ramshackle home that the family needs to clean up. The Garfield character tries to grow tomatoes so as to sell them as tomato sauce as a business venture. The kids aren’t happy that they don’t have wifi and their devices don’t work very well out in the country. The Gadsdon character decides to explore a bit after getting an anonymous letter on her bed when she wakes up. She follows the map in the letter, and it takes her to a giant tree in the woods. She recites “I Believe In Magic” three times to get the tree to come to life, and a swing chair drops down. She gets in it, and she ends up starting to explore it.

There are a lot of crazy characters that the Gadsdon character eventually meets, including a man covered in sauce pans called “Saucepan Man (Dustin Demri-Burns)”, Mr. Whatshisname, Dame Washalot (Jessica Gunning, Baby Raindeer), a spunky elf named Silky (Nicola Coughlin), Angry Pixie (Hiran Abeysekera), who were the two that delivered the letter to her bedroom and Moonface (Nonzo Anozie), who is the leader and most wise of all the people she meets that live in the “Magic Faraway Tree”. They show her around and teach her their ways, including avoiding the dirty wash water from above by not standing in the wrong place on the level below.

Similarly to “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” the Gadsdon character goes back to get her siblings and show them what she has discovered. This makes the whole area they live in a lot more fun. Especially when they see that the Gunning character has a wheel and when she turns it it goes to a different day for instance birthday day. When they climb a long ladder, it takes them to a land in the clouds based on that day. This causes a bit of trouble as they make birthday wishes and they don’t turn out so well. This is just one of the examples of the lands being troublesome for the kids and the residents of the tree.

Like most of these kinds of movies, this one has to have an antagonist, and she is Dame Snap played by  (Rebecca Ferguson). Ferguson is used to playing nasty characters like this from a book to screen adaptation. “Rose the Hat” from “Doctor Sleep” and “Morgana” from “The Kid Who Would Be King”. She is having a blast playing this character. She is doing her mustache twirling best. I love a big-name actor like this playing a villain character. They have the freedom to stretch their ability to do a different thing than they normally do. I liked her a lot in this smaller role as this antagonist. She was a fun villain. 

Besides the characters I have already mentioned, I wanted to touch on Garfield and Foy. They are the parents of the kids. These could be throwaway characters always worrying and so forth, but with these two actors in the roles, they bring more gravitas to relatively small roles. They have their own difficulties within the context of the movie. That combined with them having to worry about their children disappearing gave them a lot to do. They were a nice duo as parents. I think they had good chemistry with each other and the kids in the film. Having bigger stars as the parents in a film like this is more important to the story and the script. The director cast a lot of good people in this movie, big and small roles alike.

As a stranger to this material, I can only go off of what I watched, and I can say this with sincerity. This movie was gorgeous. The cinematography from the fields of golden grass reeds to the woods with this big beautiful tree to the little home that the family moved into. Especially all of the sky shots. Also, the production design regarding all of the rooms in the tree and the various islands in the sky are amazing to look at. The filmmaker has brought this book to life on the big screen in an incredible way. I was in awe with how beautiful this movie truly was. People see it just for that reason. 

“The Magic Faraway Tree” is a delightful little fantasy film. It has a lot of vibes from other book adoptions I’ve seen before, but that doesn’t matter. It’s its own thing, and I had a good time with it. The cast of kids in the film was pretty good, but that’s only a small part of this amazing cast. All of the bigger named actors do a good job as well in small or big roles. The cinematography and production design are both fantastic. They bring this entire world to life in a vivid and beautiful way. I was completely immersed in this world based on the book. Is this the best young adult book to screen adaptation? Probably not, but I had a good time with it. I think fans of the books will love it, and people who haven’t heard of the book series will also enjoy it. It’s a good family film that everybody can enjoy.

🌟 🌟 🌟 ½ stars