The Secret of Moonacre (2009)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

We live in an age where literacy is on the wane. The reviews of this film clearly are from people who do not realize the book was produced in 1946 and was popular in an era when people commonly used their imagination and did not expect to be told what to feel as is common in film. It predates the books about Narnia(1950) but not The Hobbit (1937). This was an era when children's literature was in a renaissance that lasted for decades. I remember loving the atmosphere of enchantment set by the book when I read it as a child and was surprised to see it had been filmed. The caustic reviewers should inform themselves about this form of literature in order to know what they're talking about. I'd like to see the film despite the fact that film productions often deal with subtle nuances from books like Jack the Ripper performing surgery. The Narnia stories thus far are amazingly well done all things considered and there is a lot to consider.

I haven't seen the film yet but I have read the book and this would seem to be the simplest way to answer many of the questions on the message board. For instance - yes, Robin and Maria have a relationship - they get married (which seems a bit creepy to me today as she would only have been about 14!!) and when she dies she strongly believes the little white horse will come to carry her away. I recently reread a reprint of the book and was disconcerted to see that it was a bit more religious than I remembered and missing all the illustrations. But still so cute!! If the film maintains the humour, mystery and wonder and the values of loyalty and friendship then it will have done a good job.Well, I have now watched the film and it only bears a passing resemblance to the book. I missed the vain Wiggins and Zachariah the cat (who was obviously as much a housecat as Wrolf is a dog!!) and Robin was supposed to be Loveday's son but it is still very entertaining.

This film is not for people who have read the book. I loved The Little White Horse and was excited about it being made into a film but was very disappointed.They changed a lot of the characters. Sir Benjamin's personality was completely different and Robin's origins and relationship with Maria was completely different. They also gave away some things right at the beginning which you are supposed the discover later. There was a lot of changes to the plot as well they need to make it much longer to fit everything in.Having said that, if you haven't read the book, it's probably a perfectly enjoyable children's fantasy film. It is certainly visually stunning.

Fairy tales are movies that either sink or swim when it comes to the silver screen, based upon the merits of their story and the characters that exist to propel the fantasy past the absurd and into the tangibly real. The Secret of Moonacre is unfortunately an example of absurdist fairytale done with little restraint or tact; the story is robust with cliché devices, the characters flat and cursed with banal dialogue, and the backstory, costume designs, production—everything just falls far short of what you may come to expect fro productions of this nature. To be fair, there are certain elements inherent to Csupo's outing here that borders on mildly entertaining if only for the references that they make to other works, yet such moments are far and few between and never truly dispel the sour taste of hackneyed amateurism that permeates the majority of Moonacre's ridiculously generic universe.At its core, The Secret of Moonacre strives to be part adventure fairytale and part whimsy comedy stitched together with undercooked themes of pride, corruption and the power of love to overcome all shadows of the human heart. Ostensibly, this mix has all the elements to make for an enjoyable family feature, yet burdened with a plodding pace and characters that never come off the screen in any manner, the Secret of Moonacre is a dull one. Centring around young teenage girl Maria (Dakota Blue Richards) as she moves into her extravagant and eccentric uncle's mansion in the Middle of Nowhere Forest under the protection of nanny Miss Heliotrope (Juliet Stevenson who serves as a trite source of comic relief every now and then with her biggest character trait being an impromptu belch), Goudge's story is one built upon established ground-works for any old fantasy tale. Sure, fair enough—there's nothing wrong with building upon already tried and tested methods—yet very little is done beyond this to help Moonacre feel like a tale of its own.Perhaps the greatest and most obvious detractive trait inherent to Alborough's adaptation however is simply through its writing which seems to go through the motions at each and every turn. The result is a feature that plods along through countless cliché and predictable contrivances to the point where all fantastical elements are lost within the generic gloop that is the whole backstory and focus point of Moonacre's world. About half way into the movie, it should be no surprise then that the production boils down to one of absurd ridicule—without the feeling of otherworldly mysticism to back up all the theatrical dialogue, sets and costumes, Csupo neglects his feature to being bland and utterly forgettable in spite of its striking visuals and over-the-top performances. In fact, with the exception of perhaps Ioan Gruffudd , the majority of the acting ensemble here feel just as disconnected to the story's fantasy as everything else does. It's not just bad—it's distracting and downright laughable when any sort of tension or conflict is pushed down the throat with little to no tangible reason to believe in it.Yet this neglect to raising the suspension of disbelief is what ultimately stops The Secret of Moonacre from ever truly coming off the screen. Perhaps with a greater budget, some bigger stars and a re-write or two, Csupo could have made something more than a sporadically pretty treat for the senses, yet as it stands nothing of the sort of achieved throughout its bumbling and overly melodramatic runtime. This in turn makes recommending Moonacre a lost cause; young females may be able to enjoy all the unicorns, pretty dresses and coy humour to the extent that everything else is ignored, yet even this assertion serves as a broad test of the imagination—which is ironically more than Csupo manages here through his excruciatingly mundane two hour exercise in creating yet another Pedestrian Fantasy By Numbers.A review by Jamie Robert Ward (http://www.invocus.net)