The Magic Faraway Tree books are special to me the way anything you truly loved in childhood is. They were the first series of books that I read repeatedly; I even got into trouble in school for pretending that the trees in the school field held magical creatures. While Joe, Beth and Frannie were exploring the wonderful lands at the top of the enchanted tree and eating pop biscuits, I was trudging through stressful days in school that were filled with lonely lunches. These books helped me feel that life could be magical, even if I hadn’t personally experienced that magic for myself. So I knew I was going to watch the movie, for the nostalgia but also for Andrew Garfield.
When we meet the Thompson children, they are tech-addled and barely interact as a family. Their father Tim (Garfield), who is a stay home dad, tries his best to get them to disconnect and spend time together, but the children don’t care and prefer their little bubble worlds. I found myself getting angry at their behaviour, because how can you have a father who looks like Andrew Garfield and treat him poorly? The audacity.
Garfield is honestly the main reason this movie is worth watching. He’s so sincere as Tim, even if his head is in the clouds a little. He has a dream of working the land and growing their own tomatoes to make pasta sauce, sauce that they can then sell for a tidy profit. Things aren’t so cheery when the family arrive at the property and find it to be quite rundown, but Polly (Claire Foy) and Tim tackle the problem with oodles of optimism, building things from scratch and even riding on a bicycle to generate electricity. Foy and Garfield have natural chemistry, and they’re believable as husband and wife. When they’re kissing each other passionately after cobbling together an irrigation system, it will put a smile on your face and maybe even lead you to wish that you were watching a movie about their origins as a couple instead of dealing with their crabby children.
But of course the crabby children are redeemed. Frannie (Billie Gadsdon) finds her voice, Beth (Delilah Bennett-Cardy) becomes more thoughtful, while Joe (Phoenix Laroche) starts to enjoy the real world more than his VR games. The film’s core message urging everyone to put down their devices and interact with the real natural world is important and necessary. When they lived in the city, the children were so isolated from the real world, preferring the artificial worlds they entered through their devices. It’s so common now to see families at dinner with everyone so glued to their phones and devices. So many of us have forgotten the joy that comes from truly connecting with someone. If watching this movie gets families to rethink their tech habits, I think the world is better off.
I also really enjoyed seeing the world of the magic faraway tree come to life, feeling such a sense of awe to see all the characters I read about and imagined fleshed out this way on the big screen. Nicola Coughlan’s Silky is pitch perfect – it’s a campy performance but Coughlan also handles Silky’s vulnerabilities really well. Another standout is Nonso Anozie as Moonface. His character aesthetic is a little different from the book illustrations, but it suits his wizened wise ways. He and Silky are on opposite sides when it comes to allowing human children to enter their magical world. He feels that human children selfishly access their world for all wonder and magic, and then toss them aside when they’re done, while Silky’s more willing to open her heart to the Thompson children.
The movie works as well as it does because the adult actors are all so good. We have acting heavyweights like Foy and Garfield, and then Rebecca Ferguson shows up as the villainous Dame Snap. She’s chewing scenery in the best way, and comes across as almost vampiric in her performance. Her scenes were especially funny and enjoyable – juvenile humour can work when it’s with the right setting and actors.
The film’s emotional payoffs are fantastic. I got teary-eyed multiple times watching the family band together and become a stronger unit. As mentioned earlier in this review, even from the peripheries of the film, Garfield commands every single scene he’s in. On paper, Tim is some kind of manic pixie dream boy, but he makes him so much more. We feel his disappointments, his losses and his triumphs.
The Magic Faraway Tree is a joyous film. It was the perfect movie to watch with my younger brother the day before his birthday; we both got to dip into the daydreams of childhood briefly before exiting into the grey world of adulthood once more.
REVIEW SCORE: 4/5
