Hans Christian Andersen: My Life as a Fairy Tale

'The Ugly Duckling' was a part of our English textbooks when I was six-seven years old. After that my interaction with Hans Christian Andersen's tales has been sadly minimal... Until of course I saw Hallmark's production of 'The Snow Queen' with Bridget Fonda recently. But it was this film that really made Hans Christian Andersen intriguing to me and actually made me want to learn more about him through the net. It is one of Hallmark's best productions with really good performances from everyone.

Kieran Bew is excellent in the title role. I'm sad to read from his filmography that hitherto this is the only film he has acted in. In the film, Hans' "brother" Edward, played by Mark Dexter, reads from a letter informing his father (James Fox), that Hans met Victor Hugo while in Paris. It so happened that while reading Hugo's 'Les Miserables' recently (a tome which I have yet to finish!), I could not, really could not imagine anyone else playing the character of the earnest, handsome young Marius in the novel but Kieran Bew! And this was before I even saw this film. I had just seen some trailers of it. I know that there are quite a few productions of 'Les Miserables' already in existence, the most recent one being with Liam Neeson as Jean Valjean. But, I do hope that there is one more production of this epic novel and Kieran Bew gets to play Marius - it's a character made for him! He's a good actor whom I really hope to see in many more films!

All in all a really worthwhile film that needed to be made to keep the torch of Andersen's tales burning(dimmed as it is in the popular imagination by the more dominating presence of the tales of the Brothers Grimm).