Four Kids and It

The family were all looking forward to watching this whilst in lockdown. The first 20 minutes were just dreadful and our kids, aged 14 and 12, and my wife all agreed to give up on it. Maybe it gets better, but to us, the first 20 minutes represented everything that's wrong with parenting and filmmaking.

I watched this with my wife who will watch anything with a bit of magic or fantasy in it. While not truly awful, it was pretty much next door. It looked poorly budgeted and the creature looked like a 1980 spitting image creation. A special mention for Russell Brand. Awful. Yes, I know it's a kids film, but I can't see any child over six or seven not being embarrassed for him. Younger kids may enjoy it, but it's probably too long with not enough action or fun to keep them interested. I haven't yet seen a Sky original that I've had a good word for. Very missable.

The characters are vile. Two of the girls especially are spoilt, uncontrolled brats who are horrible to watch. The parents should be ashamed of their parenting skills, and the awkward situation they put their children in. The CGI is really poor by today's expectations. A puppet would have been far more convincing than Caine's uncharismatic Psammead. It's a really poorly made movie which does the original story no justice.

And yet, my children love it (aged between 3-6). They've got the choice of masses of movies from various streaming services and they keep coming back to this. All of the greatest family friendly movies from the last thirty years, and they choose Four Kids and It. I'm not sure whether this is because my children have dreadful taste in films or whether it is genuinely engaging for a younger crowd. Either way, it clearly appeals to its target audience.

The movie had a good story to it, seemed cute, but I couldn't even make it to the end of it with one of the characters being such a despicable out of control character. And the mother of, "Smash" AKA Samantha had no motherly morals at all. Just because she was a single mother, doesn't mean her children needed to be such pricks. Couldn't Even make it to end of it

Having seen the 1990s series I was aware of the basic storyline. Clearly the book is a classic but unfortunately this is let down in a number of ways.

The special effects to start with are terrible. The Pssammead is first introduced as it tunnels under the sand (think Tremors) and it looks awful. Later the children fly and it was very 1970s green-screenesque.

Then there's the acting. Michael Caine cannot do much wrong as a voice actor and Russell Brand is ok, the rest are terrible. It sounds awful to say about child actors but for a feature film it really wasn't great.

I don't know what the budget was, but I suspect after Caine and Brand there was nothing left.