The Magic Faraway Tree, Review: Blyton’s Brilliance Survives the Update… Just.
The Magic Faraway Tree is loosely based on the Faraway Tree books by Enid Blyton. Andrew Garfield plays Tim Thompson, a stay-at-home Dad, who is so groovy that he plays guitar, has composed a special family song, and says woo-hoo a lot. Understandably his children hate him. Then his wife Polly, played by Claire Foy, loses her job making fridges and so they go to live in a ramshackle house in the countryside to grow tomatoes. What have fridges and tomatoes got to do with The Magic Faraway Tree you might ask. And you’d be right to.
For the uninitiated, The Faraway Tree is a magical tree leading up to an ever-changing series of gateways into fantastical worlds, both fun and perilous. Blyton’s books are essentially a collection of short stories featuring a recurring cast of characters, such as Moonface, the fairy Silky and a man who dresses in pots and pans. For the film version, screenwriter Simon Farnaby has concocted a framing device, which holds the various stories together, involving dad Tim’s dream of growing tomatoes and making Italian style sauce to make a living. It’s like a horticultural It’s a Wonderful Life.
Farnaby has also brought the story up-to-date, with mixed results. The children here are addicted to technology, they can’t live without wifi, the youngest girl barely talks, the older, Beth, wears dark make-up and, jokes her dad, might be an influencer. The innocent charm of the books has been replaced by modern cynicism, which serves to give Blyton’s Faraway adventures a purpose within the film – to return the children to a state of wonder. But for audience it spoils the sense of escapism: one wants to go up the Faraway Tree to escape the real world, not to spend time with a sulky teenager, spoiled by over-exposure to the internet. Critically, the film wastes far too much time on Andrew Garfield’s character and his tomatoes. Is that really the best they could manage? It’s barely a shrug of an idea and pales into comparison with Blyton’s seemingly endless inventiveness.
Farnaby’s screenplay also imposes much modern messaging onto Blyton’s characters and stories. For example, Silky, who in this iteration is a plus-sized fairy, dreams of being small and having dainty wings, but decides that she’s happy with who she is after-all. Perhaps this is because she has been upbraided by teenage Beth for putting too much stock in being pretty and is told not to let the boys boss her around. A perfectly reasonable message, one supposes, but it all feels rather forced.
Nonetheless, the adventures themselves remain fun and the cast acquit themselves well enough. Ultimately Blyton’s brilliance manages to shine through, if only just.
