The Magic Faraway Tree review – Blyton’s facelift with Foy and Garfield proves fruitful | film

TThe venerable Simon Farnaby has earned Hall of Fame status for his co-creation of Paddington 2, a feat that everyone has basically agreed upon along with the moon landing and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Now the screenwriting powerhouse of British film entertainment has adapted and updated Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree books from the late 1930s and 1940s – all centered around a massive enchanted tree whose branches are a canopy of magical wonder.

The result is a completely lovable, sweet-natured family fantasy film for the Easter holiday, with acres of innocent joy and whimsical weirdness.

This film distills the spirit of adventure and outdoor fun – it comes from that lost time when climbing trees was something kids naturally did – and brings it to a new world where all generations yearn to escape electronic devices and artificial intelligence.

But Barnaby and director Ben Gregor bring a new dimension of comedy and flights of fancy with black belt character turns from a fantastic cast (including Farnaby himself as a comedic farmer) and some top-notch gags.

I laughed out loud when Nonso Anozie’s cocky Moonface asked the hard-of-hearing Man of Destiny (Dustin Demry Burns) to “get help” — with disastrous results. And Mark Heap’s appearance as the loud-mouthed Mr. Oom Pom Pom is a trademark broad comedic quality.

The film has touches of Narnia and the Shire – and with its love of sweets and silly contraptions, there’s a happy memory of Roald Dahl’s Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Some of the silver-haired generation may remember BBC TV’s The Goodies and the Beanstalk.

Claire Foy plays Polly, a brilliant electronics engineer who is fired from her job for refusing to let the company’s new “smart refrigerator” spy on its users. So, she, her husband Tim (Andrew Garfield), their children Fran (Billy Gadsdon) and Joe (Phoenix Laroche), and an older, angrier, more smartphone-addicted teenager, Beth (Delilah Bennett-Cardy), are evicted from their bright but soulless, gadget-oriented flat in London, and must move to the countryside where Tim grew up, where they rent a ramshackle barn and Tim hopes to grow and market his own tomatoes. Artisan pasta sauce. In this ramshackle barn, Farmer Farnaby sets off a gruesome gag about the wifi.

Tim tells the children to stay away from the Enchanted Forest… but feisty Fran naturally explores and finds the astonishing ‘Far Tree’, whose wooden expanse is surrounded by a mysterious group of beings including the fairy Silkie (Nicola Coughlan), Lady Washalot (Jessica Gunning) who controls access to a wonderful place in the sky that changes according to the Wheel of Fortune that spins around it, and Mr Watsisnam (Oliver Cress).

But can Tim and Polly convince the children’s strict grandmother (Jennifer Saunders) that all this is good for them? And then there’s the question of what they’ll do when they encounter the evil Mrs. Snape, played by Rebecca Ferguson with an unusual asymmetrical hairstyle, like a tilted beehive so weighted down on one side that she actually has to lean to the other side to stay upright — so it’s no wonder she has a twisted attitude. There is a tremendous amount of humble pleasure to be found in foliage.