The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel is charming. This movie is a bloated melodrama. 1. Just because you can use CGI doesn't mean you have to. 2. Who needs all the ancillary backstory(ies) that aren't in the novel, and serve no useful narrative purpose. 3. In this film, the secret garden - which is, in the novel, a secret garden - is about the size of the county of Cornwall in England, and full of all sorts of exotic plants that are not in the garden in the novel. In the novel, the children gain agency in their lives by learning to take care of the secret garden, and bring order into a place that has been abandoned and left to go wild (as, in some respects, two of the children have been left uncared-for) - this is sort of the whole point of the story. It would take an army of professional gardeners months if not years to maintain the garden in this film. Read the book, watch the earlier movie. Miss this one.

It seems roughly every 7 years someone makes another adaptation, this is still a fine movie but how many more versions do we need, get a life. Are all the writers, producers and directors of today braindead unimaginative slugs without any new Ideas that they have to constantly remake already well known popular films. Time for a new generation of creative, imaginative and original movie makers to arise and take over .

As the movie starts it is 1947 and a small British girl and her family are living well in India. Then when both parents die, newly orphaned she is sent to her wealthy uncle's estate in England. Not sure what age she was supposed to be, the actress was 12 during filming.

She has led a privileged life and at first is difficult in her new surroundings. Then wandering around the large estate encounters a dog, she feeds it the meat from her sandwich, soon the two are looking for each other each day.

Then the dog takes her to a place surrounded by a tall, old wall overgrown with various vegetation, she climbs and inside finds a wonderous, somewhat magical garden, the "secret garden" of the title. Further investigation reveals it was a favorite getaway for her mother and aunt.

She also discovers she has a cousin living in the same big house, a boy mostly bed-bound. Then she meets a local boy out at the garden, eventually the three of them explore together.

All of them, and including the dad, had healings that were needed, the friendships and perhaps some of the magic of the garden help all of them.

Good movie, my wife and I watched it at home on DVD from our public library. Watching the extras on the disc, for the filming in the secret garden they actually used a number of the best gardens in the UK for sites and stitched them together for the film to seem like it was all at one place.

1993s movie was perfectly good , no need for this remake- its not good

This movie looks beautiful, it really does. And the acting is good. But why oh why did they feel they needed to upgrade an already amazing story? It's too embellished, and there are new storylines added that weren't in the book. Why? The story is magical enough as it is!