Five Children and It

Searching through the movies on 'Sky' when I was off work with flu, I stumbled across the film 'five children and it', when I was a young kid i Remember watching a program of the same name on 'BBC' and really loving it, so in an effort to restore past childhood memories (or potentially risk damaging them) i decided to give the new adaptation a go.

It got me gripped from beginning to end and I could not believe this had not been 'in my face' more with advertising and marketing schemes, this has the feel of a real good old classic BBC children's drama that you would find on a Saturday afternoon and leaves you with a real good feel good factor.

The cast is a really good choice with not a sniff of bad acting and plenty of great script work with funny,emotional and sometimes hysterical pieces of dialogue. 'Kenneth Brannagh' for me leads the cast as the professor, really funny and keeps a smile on your face. The children are all equally good, putting in excellent roles and not looking lost for a minute.....you would think they are a real family! Eddie Izard is a real gem though, giving him the role of the psamiead with a dodgy accent at first gives you the impression you are about to be disappointed but I could never have been further wrong, he has an amazing role and keeps the punchlines coming and coming.

Overall I am a 21 year old guy and found this film to be a real treasure and would certainly tell my own kids one day to watch. I still think it is criminal that the film didn't do better than it did.

a real worth see.

In these days of blockbuster movies made especially for children, it is quite refreshing to see an old fashioned tale of magic and mischief. Children of all ages will like this film and take it at face value - it is an adaptation of a classic story. The special effects are reasonable but unremarkable and we are drawn mainly to the characters played by Kenneth Branagh and Zoe Wanamaker, the latter having the best role by far. The story skips along nicely to its inevitable and predictable ending. The storyline is sentimental; unfortunately the child actors do not add anything to this emotion and appear to be fairly wooden. The film is worth a viewing on a rainy afternoon but it is unlikely to draw in the crowds.

I found this film utterly charming. I had to almost force my daughter to see it (she wanted to see The Princess Diaries 2 (shivers!!!!). But once the children found the Wishasuraus she was transfixed.

It is a film very much of British and of the Railway Children type. and will sadly be missed by many because of the Steam Roller Hype of Shark Tale. But this is a real FAMILY film.

The beginning has a distinct Harry Potter feel to it, The theme tune is clearly influenced by HP. Kenneth Branagh is the quintessential English Eccentric but unlike the Hollywood stereotype this is a British film that has it's tongue firmly in cheek. Zoe Wannamaker as the caring housekeeper who knows more that she lets on is wonderful.

Eddie Izzard as the voice of the Sand Fairy is perfect.

This is as British as Brighton Rock and Whelks in a tray at the sea side. And I loved it.

I would think that this was one of those films whose director hadn't read the book it was based on, were it not for the fact that they are just slightly similar. It is certainly possible for a great film to be "based" very loosely on a book and this was certainly the latter but not the former.

There were a number of flaws. One was that it tried to be too much like the Railway Children, probably because adults would expect this, being from the same author. Another is that it also sought to be too like Harry Potter, down to the music and in overemphasizing the setting. I have nothing against J K Rowling or the films but the book is just nothing like the Harry Potter ones. I thought the Psammead, though very well voiced by Eddie Izzard and in character too, was almost gratuitously in a totally inappropriate environment. I may have missed something here, as the comments made about one of the characters' own books may have been a reference to the inaccuracy of the adaptation. There was also no need for the extra characters, and today's special effects could easily have been used to tell the story as it was written, but they weren't.

I saw this film with my two children, one of whom knows the book and the other of whom doesn't. The one who does know it thought it was all right but wasn't as enthusiastic as the one who doesn't. I'm not sure what this means.

FIVE CHILDREN AND IT is the perfect way to trash the memory of the classic Edith Nesbit novel by turning it into something soulless, trivial, and trashy. Although the premise of the the film and the novel are the same, both veer off in very different directions and it has to be said that this bears little relation to the characters or events of the book's storyline.

Firstly, the setting has been changed to WW1 from the Crimean War; I'm not sure why, except maybe people don't know or care about the Crimean War these days. Instead of the likable, inventive children of the Nesbit story, we get a bunch of screamers, whiners, and - in the case of Freddie Highmore - oddly creepy kids and the stock fat cousin character who of course turns out to be evil. God knows what all that monster stuff in the basement laboratory is supposed to be about.

The famous Psammead, voiced by the irritating Eddie Izzard and animated via rubbishy CGI, is a far cry from the excellent puppet utilised in the old BBC TV series version of the tale. Elsewhere, we get horrible CGI dinosaurs, CGI flying people (to cash in on HARRY POTTER, of course), and dumb comedy in the form of fart and burp jokes. The director is so inexperienced he even uses cheesy slow motion in the sentimental interludes. Elsewhere, viewers are stuck watching the likes of Kenneth Branagh and Zoe Wanamaker mugging for all their worth. Stick with the BBC show!