Review by Tim Robins
Once upon two weeks last Wednesday, I decided to brave the holiday crowds and see The Magic Faraway Tree, a whimsical fantasy adventure based on a series of books by the beloved, if controversial, author Enid Blyton.
Enid Blyton (1897-1868) was a literary powerhouse, writing in excess of 760 works and estimated to have sold over 600 million books since the 1930s. There are few adults today who didn’t read Blyton stories as children, or have read them to their own children. If you have never read the author’s books, you are certain to have seen television adaptations of characters such as The Famous Five and Noddy.
That said, there are surprisingly few film adaptations of Blyton’s books. The Magic Faraway Tree is mostly based on The Enchanted Wood, first published in 1939, the first book in Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree trilogy (plus a picture book). The series is comparable to the “Oz” adventures by Frank L Baum and others (but not the HBO prison series) and Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which Blyton read and enjoyed as a child.
The film follows the adventures of the Thompson family, whose children enter an enchanted wood in the English countryside. At the heart of the wood lies a huge, magical tree, with all manner of curious characters living among its branches. in the tree’s trunk and branches. At the top of the tree, is an ever-changing assortment of magical lands.
A personable cast is headed by Claire Foy and Andrew Garfield as, respectively, Polly and Tim Thompson, the parents of three not particularly naughty children – Beth (Delilah Bennett-Cardy), Fran (Billie Gadsdon) and Joe (Phoenix Laroche). Director, Ben (Fatherhood, Brassic, Black Ops) Gregor, has also assembled an excellent, diverse, supporting cast to play the kooky residents of the ‘Far Away Tree’.
Among the fantastical characters are the somewhat pompous Moon-Face (Nonso Anozie), whose hair is styled like a crescent moon; Silky (Nicola Coughlan), who, despite her lovely luscious locks, longs to have wings like a proper fairy; and Dame Washalot (Jessica Gunning), who has the habit of taking in residents’ laundry then throwing the dirty water down the tree and onto the heads of unsuspecting visitors.
Cameo roles include Lenny Henry as the Great Know-All, who shares a gigantic beard with Michael Palin, as Know-All, and Simon Russell Beale, as another Know-All. Mild but gleeful villany is provided by Jennifer Saunders as Tim’s interfering mother and, in the lands of magic, Rebecca Furgison plays the sinister Madam Snap, whose precipitously leaning hair is as startling as it is silly.
In the book, School Teacher Madam Snap’s name used to be Madam Slap. This is just a small example of how Blyton’s work has been changed to meet modern day sensibilities. But, despite the teacher’s change of name, Snap still acts as if she wants to give her pupils a taste of her open hand across their faces.
Actor-writer Simon Farnaby (The Mighty Boosh, Horrible Histories, Paddington 2, Wonka) has ensured the The Magic Faraway Tree is shot through with his characteristic wry humour and up-to the moment social commentary. Polly despises the fact her talents have been used to create a talking electronic fridge that spies on its users (Dame Judy Dench gives an excellent impression of the fridge, and do watch the credits to the end, particularly if, perhaps, you watched this film alongside children perhaps a little too young to pay rapt attention).
In turn, the children are horrified to find that they are all expected to live in a barely converted barn with no access to social media and video games. This gives the film a contemporary edge by setting up an opposition between the children’s immersion in modern technology and the technology lite countryside, as a place where the children can actually “touch grass”.
The script is also alive to the difficult situations in which children have lived in recent years. Fran, for example, the youngest daughter, begins the film as a quiet, introverted child. (Farnaby has said that Fran is intended to dramatise the anxiety and isolation experienced by children during the Covid-19 lockdowns).
I must admit to a certain anxiety about seeing a film based on the work of Enid Blyton. Not because of the usual criticisms levelled at the author – that a few of her books depict racist caricatures and villains that are often working class. (If you want to further explore such criticisms, I direct you to the on-line blog posts of David Buckingham). Rather, my anxiety was about how Blyton’s work would be treated in the cinema and I wondered how the author’s characters would stand up to Roald Dahl’s Willie Wonka and Michael Bond’s Paddington on the big screen.
I was also surprised to feel protective of Enid Blyton’s name, because her books played a small but influential part of my childhood. I remember being terrified in kindergarten by a radio or record adaptation of Noddy in Toyland (it was the giant bouncing balls that did it!). Growing up, I was an avid reader of The Famous Five (The Secret Seven was two too many characters to keep track of, besides fame is a more positive quality than secrecy). That said, neither Blyton, nor Doctor Who author Terrance Dicks, got me into reading. That was down to my Mother, a primary school teacher, and Ladybird Books key reading scheme.
So, now I will take this opportunity to tell my oft repeated story of how Blyton wrote to my mother in reply to her inquiry about a story the author had written for parents of adopted children. Suffice to say, Blyton cautioned my mother to love me very much lest I become that saddest of all people – a juvenile delinquent! This was a common attitude at the time. My birth mother expressed a similar fear on account of the way adopted children were portrayed in films, television and newspapers.
None of the Thompson children are adopted and the film misses the opportunity to make the Thompsons a family of colour or even “mixed race”. As such, the film certainly captures Blyton’s vision of a decidedly white, rural idyll, but it is also worth noting that this image of Britishness is a selling point on the international media marketplace.
Ironically, for a film that frets about the place of new media technology in children’s lives, The Magic Faraway Tree is being screened in the same cinemas as The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, a commercial juggernaut from Nintendo. Then again, Blyton’s The Enchanted Wood is also a game for Nintendo DSi, as Flips: The Faraway Tree Stories, reviewed here in The Enid Blyton Society website.
I guess you can’t get faraway from the present, but at least The Magic Faraway Tree has story arcs aplenty, entertaining live performances and certifiably fresh characters. None of which are to be found in its computer animated rival.
Tim Robins
The Magic Faraway Tree is in cinemas now | Official Site: themagicfarawaytreefilm.co.uk
Head downthetubes for…
• The Magic Faraway Tree Collection (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
• The Enid Blyton Society: Enid Blyton on TV and Film – Checklist
• Enid Blyton – Lashings of Information about the Children’s Author
• David Buckingham: The Blyton enigma: changing critical perspectives on children’s popular culture
• Stella & Rose’s Books: Enid Blyton Index | Information Pages (stellabooks.com)
The Faraway Tree: Tim Quinn on The Book
“I climbed the Faraway Tree back when I was six and three quarters and I haven’t come down yet,” author Tim Quinn, who has previously worked extensively with the Blyton estate, noted in 2020.
“A timeless tale with origins stretching back to the Norse myths of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, Enid Blyton captures any child’s mind before they are halfway down the opening page. No mean feat. The Faraway Tree is situated in the middle of the Enchanted Wood. It is peopled with a smorgasbord of peculiar characters, many crossing the line between sane and cracked. At the top of the tree is a precarious ladder which stretches up to a different cloud each week. On these clouds are mysterious lands of guaranteed adventure and danger.
“But be warned: If the cloud moves off from the top of the Faraway Tree, you may well be stuck on it forevermore! From memory, these lands include the Land of Giants, the Land of Birthday Presents, the Land of Dame Slap’s School, the Land of Topsy Turvy, and the Land of Stupids. Each tale moves at a breakneck speed with unexpected twists and turns along the way, veering in and out of legends, myths and fairy tales.
“From the early 1920s and for over 60 years Enid Blyton was Britain’s most successful children’s author, writing over 700 books and countless short stories. She instilled a love of reading in generations of children. Needless to say she has been under attack in our present World of Stupids, usually by talentless would-be writers who claim her work is dated and therefore of little interest to the children of today. Such an idiotic assumption. Like Dickens she mainly wrote books set in her own time period. To suggest that children can’t cope with tales set in the Twenties through Fifties is such an insult to the imagination of kids. By the same thinking, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and Richmal Crompton should all be consigned to the dumpster. A classic is a classic down through the ages.”
While editing the Enid Blyton Mystery & Suspense comic book for Egmont Fleetway, Tim and his late wife Jane became firm friends with Enid’s elder daughter, Gillian Baverstock. They decided to start our own publishing company, Quill Publications, together and created the comic book Blue Moon to instil a love of reading in children. Gillian, Jane and Tim wrote the stories and Tim brought in his friends from Marvel Comics to illustrate each issue, including Charlie Adlard and Steve Parkhouse.
Most of the tales told sequels to fairy tales, myths and legends. Snow White, Jack of the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Tom Thumb, Puss in Boots, Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty, and the Pied Piper all lived in the Land of the Blue Moon and would often collide in their adventures. All work absolutely inspired by Enid.
• The Magic Faraway Tree Collection (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
A freelance journalist and Doctor Who fanzine editor since 1978, Tim Robins has written on comics, films, books and TV programmes for a wide range of publications including Starburst, Interzone, Primetime and TV Guide.
His brief flirtation with comics includes ghost inking a 2000AD strip and co-writing a Doctor Who strip with Mike Collins. Since 1990 he worked at the University of Glamorgan where he was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies and the social sciences. Academically, he has published on the animation industry in Wales and approaches to social memory. He claims to be a card carrying member of the Politically Correct, a secret cadre bent on ruling the entire world and all human thought.
Categories: Features, Film, Other Worlds, Reviews
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