| Worth seeing: | to see how Simon Farnaby updates and develops Enid Blyton's 1930s and 40s children's favourite |
| Director: | Ben Gregor |
| Featuring: | Andrew Garfield, Billie Gadsdon, Claire Foy, Delilah Bennett-Cardy, Phoenix Laroche, Dustin Demri-Burns, Jennifer Saunders, Jessica Gunning, Lenny Henry, Mark Heap, Michael Palin, Nicola Coughlan, Nonso Anozie, Oliver Chris, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Farnaby, Simon Russell Beale, Sir Lenny Henry, Sir Michael Palin |
| Length: | 110 minutes |
| Certificate: | U |
| Country: | France, UK, US |
| Released: | 27th March 2026 |
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
When Polly Thompson (Claire Foy) is fired from her job for refusing to let the fridges she designs spy on their owners, her family has no option but to move to the country.
Her stay-at-home dad husband Tim (Andrew Garfield) finds an old barn near where he grew up and they spruce it up a bit to make a new home for them and their three children, Fran (Billie Gadsdon), Joe (Phoenix Laroche) and Beth (Delilah Bennett-Cardy).
While Tim works on his dream of setting up his own Italian pasta sauce brand, with no electricity or wifi to power or connect their devices, the children have little option but to go out and explore their new surroundings – ignoring the warning from a local farmer (Simon Farnaby) not to go into the woods.
In those woods, they encounter a magic tree, inhabited by a peculiar collection of characters – including a fairy, a pixie, someone who’s forgotten his name, a man who’s head is shaped like the moon and someone who wears nothing but saucepans. What was Enid Blyton on when she created these characters?!
Their new friends take them on a string of adventures to lands only accessible from the Magic Faraway Tree, where they meet people who can grant wishes, cast spells, fill their lives with wonder – and fear.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
The director Ben Gregor has based this film on a series of books written by Enid Blyton in the late 1930s and 40s, but childhood has changed a lot over the past 8 or 9 decades and actor-writer Simon Farnaby has brought the source material up to date.
Having no Wi-fi or mobile signal wasn’t a problem for Enid Blyton’s protagonists and no-one worried about smart-fridges spying on their owners. But Farnaby goes further, running a narrative thread through Blyton’s episodic visits to lands such as the Land of Goodies, the Land of Birthdays and the Land of Spells. We meet the same characters in the same places but Farnaby also gives their actions purpose, as the children’s father tries to start a new business to help to pay for their new home, their mother tries to keep her overbearing and judgemental mother (Jennifer Saunders) at bay and the folk of the magical faraway tree learn to deal with the fact that as children grow up, they don’t need the sense of fantasy and adventure that they can offer.
Blyton’s lands are brought together with bold colours and dream-like wonder – both good dreams and nightmares – and most of the tree people are the kinds of surreal characters that any child would be excited to spend time with.
It’s fun and warm and as magical as it is bonkers, but despite its provenance – the best bits are Simon Farnaby’s modernisations and narrative additions, from efforts to keep the new family business afloat to the suggestion that the folk of the faraway tree might have a greater connection to the family than it might first appear.