Crew
Director – Ben Gregor, Screenplay – Simon Farnaby, Based on the The Faraway Tree Novels by Enid Blyton, Producers – Nicolas Brown, Pippa Harris, Jane Hooks & Danny Perkins, Photography – Zac Nicholson, Music – Isabella Summers, Visual Effects Supervisor – Tim Ledbury, Visual Effects – Entropy Group VFX Ltd, Gelaro Grace Studio, Lola Post Production/Milk VFX (Supervisor – Sam Reed) & Stargate Studios Malta (Supervisor – Jonathan Caruana), Special Effects Supervisor – Richard Cheal, Makeup Design – Karen Hartley-Thomas, Prosthetics Designer – Kristyan Mallett, Production Design – Alexandra Walker. Production Company – Neal Street/Elysian Film Group.
Cast
Andrew Garfield (Tim Thompson), Claire Foy (Polly Thompson), Delilah Bennett-Cardy (Beth Thompson), Billie Gadsdon (Fran Thompson), Phoenix Laroche (Joe Thompson), Nicola Coughlan (Silky), Nonzo Anozie (Moonface), Dustin Demri-Burns (Saucepan Man), Jessica Gunning (Dame Washalot), Hiran Abeysekera (Angry Pixie), Oliver Chris (Mr. Watzisname), Rebecca Ferguson (Dame Snap), Jennifer Saunders (Grandma), Mark Heap (Mr. Oom Boom Boom), Simon Farnaby (Farmer Brian), Claire Keelan (Bella), Michael Dapaah (Goodie Policeman), Simon Russell Beale, Lenny Henry & Michael Palin (Know Alls), Judi Dench (The Voice of the Fridge)
Plot
Husband and wife Tim and Polly Thompson decide to move into a cottage in the countryside with their three children Beth, Fran and Joe. Tim wants to fulfil his dream to grow tomatoes and market a pasta sauce. The children experience culture shock moving to a place that has no electricity and being unable to use their electronic devices. Fran picks up something that has been dropped and returns it to what she does not realise is the fairy Silky. Silky leaves an invite on Fran’s pillow inviting her to the Magic Faraway Tree. Fran follows directions into the woods, ignoring the signs warning of danger, and to the tree, which requires her to say she believes in magic three times before it comes to life. Climbing it, she finds herself in the magic world of the tree where fairies and pixies live. She is shown the top of the tree where stairs lead to a magical land that changes every day. Fran returns with the other children and they explore the realm.
British author Enid Blyton (1897-1968) was one of the most popular children’s authors of all time. She published over 750 books for young children and pre-teen ages. These include the Famous Five and Secret Seven adventure stories, the St Clare’s school stories and the Noddy and Big Ears stories for young children. These days, Blyton’s books have fallen out of favour because of racist and sexist elements – they are usually re-released with such elements edited out. There have been several Famous Five and Noddy films and tv series. The Magic Faraway Tree is adapted from a quartet of Blyton’s books for young children that consist of The Enchanted Wood (1939), The Magic Faraway Tree (1943), The Folk of the Faraway Tree (1946) and Up the Faraway Tree (1951) about children who encounter a magic tree and its unusual denizens. The books were previously adapted in a British animated tv series Enid Blyton’s Enchanted Lands (1997-8).
I grew up with Enid Blyton and am very familiar with the sense of Britishness (at least of the 1940s and 50s) that her books embody. The Famous Five, The Secret Seven and Noddy and Big Ears were all part of my early years. I even had a knitted Noddy toy when I was in my single digit age group (in the more dubious aspect, my brother was given a knitted version of one of the notoriously racist Gollywog dolls). I have never re-read the books but suspect that doing so would ruin all fond memories of them. Suffice to say they were roundly parodied in the comedic Five Go Mad in Dorset (1982) and its two sequels.
The Magic Faraway Tree was the third film for Ben Gregor who has mostly worked as a director in British tv. The script comes from Simon Farnaby who is better known as an actor – he was the ghost of the dead politician without any pants in the UK version of the comedy tv series Ghosts (2019-23), which he co-created. He has also written scripts for films such as Mindhorn (2016), Paddington 2 (2017), Wonka (2023) and Paddington in Peru (2024). Farnaby can be briefly spotted here as the farmer that owns the property (the farmer’s wi-fi/wifey is played by Farnaby’s real-life wife Claire Keelan).
My familiarity and memory of the Blyton stories is why The Magic Faraway Tree feels like a shock to the system. As the film opens, we have the husband and wife arguing about smart fridges. We are then introduced to the children who all give impression of serious Internet Addiction Disorder to their social media feeds, gaming etc. Their shock withdrawal forms quite a large part of the script. All technologies that would have been utterly alien to Enid Blyton who wrote her manuscripts on an old-fashioned typewriter. There are other aspects of the script that would leave the notoriously prudish Enid Blyton rotating in her grave – a scene where everybody sits in Miss Snap’s classrooms and gives a barrage of loud farts. Or exactly what the very conservative Blyton would have made of Delilah Bennett-Cardy’s attempts to introduce fairy Nicola Coughlan to feminism.
In looking for a work that I could compare The Magic Faraway Tree to, the one that immediately came to mind was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) where a group of children go on a venture into a magic realm (a tree here, a candy factory in Willy Wonka) and experience fantastical adventures. In contrasting the two, the differences become immediately apparent. Willy Wonka was a work that came with a dark and sinister bite underneath the magic. By contrast, The Magic Faraway Tree seems to be working so hard to be nice and all-inclusive that it lacks any threat. It is there in the form of Rebecca Ferguson’s one-dimensional villainess Miss Snap and to a lesser extent Jennifer Saunder’s grandmother but neither character offers a significant nemesis – Miss Snap is just another in the series of episodic adventures in the different lands that the children must escape from. What the story feels like it needed was Miss Snap (or the grandmother) as a threat right throughout, trying to thwart their every plan of action. But either character is just an interlude, not a significant dramatic hurdle.
The other issue is what an incredibly Luddite divide the film promotes. On one side, it posits the children, their attachment to their connected devices and desire for wi-fi, as well as Claire Foy’s job designing smart fridges as a bad, mind and creativity numbing thing. Even Jennifer Saunders and her promise to get Delilah Bennett-Cardy into a good school is painted as unappealing. On the other hand, it posits going native and embracing nature, living off the grid with no electricity, and discovering a childhood magic that lives in nature as the panacea to all that. It is concerning that the film makes such black-and-white divides out of it. I mean, I don’t see what the problem is with there being some in-between position. One of the big things the film celebrates is Andrew Garfield selling his pasta sauce to a big company – it would be very hard to any company to sell that without e-commerce. Not to mention, you cannot help but wonder how the greenhouse construction and tomato growing operation might have been improved if Claire Foy had been able to look up some DIY advice online.
What does impress is the amazing cast line-up that The Magic Faraway Tree has brought together. This includes Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy as the parents. Elsewhere you can spot almost the entirety of British Actors Equity, including names like Nonso Anozie (who is listed as the star of the show around the web due to the ridiculous habit of listing of the cast list in terms of the order that people appear on screen on the IMDB – the real stars Garfield and Foy end well down the list); Nicola Coughlan (whose bright performance owns the show whenever she is around) as a fairy, even Jessia Gunning, the wonder of tv’s Baby Reindeer (2021) as a fairy obsessed with washing; Rebecca Fergsuon as an evil schoolmistress; comic legend Jennifer Saunders, creator of Absolutely Fabulous (1992-2012), as the grandmother; former Monty Python Michael Palin and comedian Lenny Henry as two of the five heads of the Know Alls; and no less than Dame Judi Dench Judi Dench as the voice of the smart fridge.
Trailer here