“Come Away,” a new fantasy film for kids starring Angelina Jolie and David Oyelowo and now available as a Download to Own, weaves familiar themes and characters into its uneven story of loss and love.
Jolie and Oyelowo are Rose and Jack Littleton, a married couple with three children, David, Peter and Alice (Reece Yates, Jordan A. Nash and Keira Chansa). When we first meet them, it’s a contented family, with a carefree mother, a model ship building father and happy-go-lucky siblings.
Cracks begin to appear when prissy Aunt Eleanor (Anna Chancellor) swoops in, teaches Alice “how to be a lady” and sends David off to a private school.
Soon after tragedy strikes, leaving David dead, and the family in tatters. Peter and Alice, who we soon come to understand are actually Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland try to fix things by selling a family treasure but instead are swept into a dangerous adventure that features a menagerie of fabled characters come to life, the Hatter (Clarke Peters), the Red Queen and the White Rabbit.
Themes of alcoholism, gambling addiction and death make “Come Away” a movie unmoored from any sort of pigeonhole. It’s not exactly a children’s film, although it contains many elements of kid’s entertainment but it doesn’t quite seem geared for grown-ups either.
On the upside, there’s nothing formulaic about the storytelling. Ideas that reflect real life issues are bashed into one another, held together with ribbons and bows. Even when the film takes an imaginative twist it is generally grounded in some earthly and very grown up concerns. Tonally, it’s an uneasy match that gives the film a wonky tone.
“Come Away” is a very handsomely appointed movie, with beautiful imagery and fanciful set decoration. There are interesting performances, particularly from Gugu Mbatha-Raw as the adult Alice, but the remix of two classic tales, “Peter Pan” and “Alice in Wonderland,” never achieves lift off as a flight of fantasy.
“The Secret Garden,” the latest adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic 1911 novel, brings the classic story of friendship and wonder to VOD this week.
The tale begins in India in 1947 on the eve of Partition in India. Mary Lennox (Dixie Egerickx), born in India to wealthy English parents, finds herself orphaned when mummy and daddy suddenly pass away in a cholera outbreak. Sent to live with Archibald Craven (Colin Firth, who played a version of his son Colin in a 1987 TV movie of “The Secret Grden”), an aloof uncle she’s never met on his remote and rambling Yorkshire moors estate, the youngster has trouble adapting to life in the large country house under the strict housekeeper Mrs. Medlock (Julie Walters).
While exploring Misselthwaite Manor Mary makes some interesting finds. She meets Colin (Edan Hayhurst), her ailing cousin whose been locked away in one wing of the house. Both are stinging from the loss of a parent—his mother passed—and both feel like outsiders in the family.
When Mary discovers a hidden garden tucked away on the grounds, she and her friend Dickon (Amir Wilson) tend to the forgotten patch of land. Bringing the garden back to life also awakens the place’s natural restorative power that helps Mary, Colin and Mr. Craven heal, physically and spiritually.
Fans of the book should know liberties have been taken with the classic text. The shift to 1947 works, adding an additional layer of meaning to Mary’s story of distress. It helps base the tale in the reality of the situation but the movie allows magic realism to seep in.
That it is from the producer of the “Harry Potter” and “Paddington” movies means that it has a family-friendly fantasy gloss that the original text and other adaptations have done without. The magical elements may only exist in Mary’s imagination and not stem from the wonder of nature as the book suggests, but they are pronounced. There are ghosts and the garden’s trees respond to the kids, almost like Treebeard in “Lord of the Rings: Two Towers.” It adds a more whimsical tone to a story that had previously relied on the more grounded ideas of exercise and fresh air as a road to physical and mental health.
What it all means, really, is that the story isn’t quaint anymore. The new “The Secret Garden” is a handsomely made, big CGI movie that plays like “Masterpiece Theatre” for kids. Closer in tone to “Harry Potter” than author Frances Hodgson Burnett’s original ode to the healing power of love, kindness and nature, it isn’t as soulful as other versions but should appeal to younger audiences who are used to glossy adaptations of books for kids.
Mackenzie Foy, starring as Clara in the Disney fantasy “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms,” sits with Richard to discuss the film and her dream of directing a movie.
Based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” and Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” ballet, Disney’s newest fantasy also adds in large, frothy dollops of “Alice in Wonderland, “ “Narnia” and even “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
The action in “The Nutcracker And The Four Realms” begins like so many other Disney films, with the death of a parent. It’s Christmas and Clara (Mackenzie Foy) is still hurting from the recent loss of her mother. Her present is a beautiful ornamental egg once owned by her late mom. “To my beautiful Clara,” reads the attached card. “Everything you need is inside. Love Mother.”
There is something inside. Trouble is, she doesn’t have the key required to open the egg. A party game at her godfather Drosselmeyer’s (Morgan Freeman) Christmas party leads her to the key but it remains out of reach, snatched up by a tiny mouse who lures Clara into the strange world of three Realms: Land of Snowflakes, Land of Flowers and Land of Sweets. There, with Phillip (Jayden Fowora-Knight), a soldier, and an army of mice she learns secrets about her past and embarks on adventures in search of the key. Who will help her—The Sugar Plum Fairy (Keira Knightley)? The Snow Realm King (Richard E. Grant)? Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren)?—and who will conspire against her? “It won’t be easy,” says Drosselmeyer, “but it was her mother’s dying wish.”
The opulence of the set design, the whimsy of the story, the use of classical music and ballet will draw comparisons to “Fantasia” but this is different. It’s part steampunk Christmas, part power princess tale about a girl who discovers, as her mother wrote, “everything you need is inside.”
Foy capably holds the centre of the film but it is Knightley who has all the fun. She’s a glittery-pink-powder-puff with cotton candy hair and a Betty Boop voice. She’s in full pantomime mode, grabbing the spirit of the piece with both hands. Her spirited performance brings such much-needed oomph to the film.
“The Nutcracker And The Four Realms” has some fun moments—the Mouse King is cool but perhaps on the nightmarish side for very small kids—and a timely message that we are stronger together than divided but often feels like an expensive Christmas card—beautiful to look at but flat.
