Five Children and It
A review for kids.
Directed by John Stephenson.
Acted by Kenneth Branagh, Zoe Wanamaker, Freddie Highmore, Jonathon Bailey,
Jessica Claridge, Poppy Rogers, Tara Fitzgerald, Alex Jennings and more.
At the beginning of the last century, there was a Great War. Fathers, and even mothers, had to leave their children, put on big heavy uniforms and go to fight for their country. And sometimes they didn’t come home.
In such times children have to be very brave, in a grown-up sort of way, and learn to look after themselves and their brothers and sisters, even if they are still very little.
The five children in this story are lucky enough to have an uncle in the country that they can stay with. He is very rich and lives in a big old castle by the sea.
They are sad as they kiss and hug their mother and father good-bye at the railway station. Especially the youngest boy, Robert (Jonathon Bailey, you might have seen him acting in Finding Neverland). He is a headstrong boy who always speaks his mind and he shares a special relationship with his father. His father gives him his compass because he knows that Robert will be able to keep his brothers and sisters ’on track’.
But it is the eldest brother Cyril who is has to be the responsible one that all the children must listen to. Robert doesn’t like that at all and challenges his brother’s authority all of the time. Fortunately Cyril is a wise young man and allows Robert to have his way, often. As a result the children follow him and have some very exciting adventures. That is how they meet ‘It’. ‘It’ is a pretty cool computer-generated fairy, of a different kind. ‘It’ becomes a good friend and helper of the children.
Their uncle, who is a nutty professor of mathematics, has a son called Horace. Horace is horrible (like Harry Potter’s cousin), at least in the beginning. Martha is the housekeeper. She is also pretty nutty but is always there to help when the children really need it.
There is magic in this film but the kind of magic that doesn’t last for ever. The children have to learn that magic will always fail and that it is then that they have to know what to do for themselves.
Lou Crow
