At last, we might be free of the hegemony of Paddington. That well-mannered ursine need not be the British public’s sole cinematic obsession. One of the franchise’s co-writers, Simon Farnaby, is quietly building his own empire of wholesome whimsy, all spiritual successors to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968). Post-Wonka (2023), he’s come back for another spin on a literary classic, this time adapting Enid Blyton’s The Faraway Tree series (here titled The Magic Faraway Tree) for director Ben Gregor.
Farnaby keeps it fresh and witty, combining the wordplay and low-stakes surrealism of his roots in The Mighty Boosh and Horrible Histories with a keen eye for literary adaptation. He’s never precious about the source material – Wonka was, after all, an origin story prequel to the Chocolate Factory – yet keeps a core respect for the wonder and imagination that makes literary classics out of bedtime stories.
And Blyton, as both one of Britain’s most popular and most contested writers, is ripe for the Farnaby treatment. He preserves the basics of her four-book series, with its rigid child’s-eye view of the world. Here, the magnificent English countryside conceals a magical tree, in which reside Moonface (Nonso Anozie) and his enormous crescent hair; the fairy Silky (a luminous Nicola Coughlan); the cheery laundress Dame Washalot (Baby Reindeer’s Jessica Gunning); the Don Quixote-like Saucepan Man (Dustin Demri-Burns); Mr Watzisname (Oliver Chris), who’s forgotten what he’s called; and the tiny Angry Pixie (Hiran Abeysekera).
Their home offers a gateway to other worlds, where a child’s greatest dream – an endless supply of sweets – can collide with their greatest fear – the stern headmistress Dame Snap, played by a sneering Rebecca Ferguson in answer to the question, “What if we made the Child Catcher hot?” Ann Maskrey’s outsized costumes and Alexandra Walker’s playhouse sets offer a sense of joyous abandon, all accompanied by Isabella Summers’s heart-swelling score. There are French disco elves and an office that operates by the same rules as Twin Peaks’s Red Room (wonk uoy wonk uoy fi).
Farnaby, as you’d expect, does leave behind Blyton’s more regressive ideas, as well as the comparatively simplistic outlook of her stories, which seemed interested less in passing down wisdom than indulging in playtime fantasies. Here, child heroes Beth (Delilah Bennett-Cardy), Fran (Billie Gadsdon), and Joe (Phoenix Laroche) are being raised by two rather brilliant parents, Polly and Tim. And we immediately know they’re brilliant because they’re played by Claire Foy and Andrew Garfield.
Tim is a stay-at-home dad, so attuned to the manic pixie dream boy mould that it lets Garfield practically bounce off the walls. Polly kickstarts the plot by quitting her job as a smart fridge designer in protest against privacy invasion – she’s the more authoritative, practical parent, yet Foy has enough of her own frenetic energy to prevent the character from devolving into the humourless scold.
Both are fun, eccentric parents whose children can’t appreciate the fear that they’ve wasted their childhoods on digital screens. Not only does the tech angle lead to some brilliant gags (Farnaby turns up as a local farmer who confuses “Wifi” for “wife, aye”), but it’s a lovely way to tether Blyton’s work to a thoroughly modern world, in a way that feels regenerative rather than dismissive. Because there’s more out there, after all, than Paddington.
Dir: Ben Gregor. Starring: Andrew Garfield, Claire Foy, Nonso Anozie, Nicola Coughlan, Jessica Gunning, Jennifer Saunders, Rebecca Ferguson. Cert U, 110 minutes.
‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ is in cinemas from 27 March
