I can't even review the story, the cast was too distracting for me to get into the movie. I guess the filmmakers wanted to take the idea of colorblind casting one step further, all the way into everything-blind casting. It was just too silly. One blond parent and one Indian parent produce a pale, blond child. A family of traditionally pasty English aristocracy have one Black daughter. A Victorian tutor is Asian. The cast is almost entirely female. Most bizarrely, the young boy appears to be played by a girl.
Personally, I don't care what performers play what characters as long as they do it convincingly. Race, gender, none of it matters as long as the person on the screen comes across completely as who they are in the story. Otherwise, instead of the story, the viewer is asked to pay attention to the artifice - the way the movie is made becomes as important as the plot, and that just doesn't interest me. I want to be immersed in a fantastic experience, not reminded that these are actors pretending.
The character of Charlie, the young son, is a perfect example. I fell down a rabbit hole trying to work out whether the actor (Marshall Hawkes) was female, and I discovered that he's listed as male and has only ever played male characters. Is he trans? No idea, but it's not relevant. That's not the issue, because, again, it's the character that matters, not the actor. It's not even his casting that's weird, its his wardrobe. If a movie wants to have a prepubescent girl play a boy, great, as long as they can pull it off. But in this case, a young, well-to-do Victorian lad had long hair pulled up in a bun. Hawkes has extremely feminine features and mannerisms, but might have been a convincing young boy if not for the hair. Not only was it distractingly anachronistic, it went unmentioned by any of the characters, and it only emphasized the performer's clear femininity. When an actor plays a role, they don't get to choose their own hairstyle. Why was this decision made? More baffling still, Hawkes has had the same hairstyle in every single role, all male, regardless of era or context. How does that happen? Is it in the contract? Is it a statement? Is the audience being challenged not to notice? Take a look at the confused reviews for the movie Prototype, in which Hawkes plays a boy named Andy, again with long hair, this time with a pink turtleneck and unmistakably female mannerisms. I can understand a director being interested in making a social statement through casting, but five directors all making the same statement with the same actor? It makes me worry this kid is being used as a pawn by the adults. That being none of my business, though, it's simply a massive distraction from this story, and a simple haircut, ordinarily a prerequisite for any actor in any role, would have avoided it. As it is, between Hawkes and the rest of the cast, the story ends up as a sacrifice to whatever statement the filmmakers were trying to make, if any, while the viewer's attention is divided trying to figure out what it is.
