The Fairy King (2002)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Rob (Corbin Bernsen), an American, and his British-born wife, Nancy (Glynis Barber) make a trip to the Isle of Man, with their two children, Kyle and Evey. This is because the family has inherited a beautiful old house from Nancy's grandmother. Yet, from the minute they arrive and announce their intent to stay, the village is aghast. This property has a legend of demons, stuck in a mine, and no one should consider making it a home. Nonsense, says Rob, even though a nearby gardener (Malcolm McDowell) warns him to pack his bags and go. Yet, the children love the place, especially the huge amount of large fireflies that flicker her and there, day and night. Its Evey who discovers they are not insects, but beautiful fairies and they confide their secrets to her alone. Rather than demons being stuck in the mine, its their fairy king and other small magical beings. Since the mine was a gold one, Rob and company start to dig into it. Alas, things do go wrong and Rob gets a strange illness. Yet, how can they stop when the fairies need their king? This minor but lovely film has the most gorgeous setting on the Isle. In addition, the fairies are the star attraction, imagined with the very fine special effects. The cast is nice and the story a crowd pleasing gem. So, sit like a king, queen, prince, or princess on your favorite sofa and watch the magic unfold.

I would guess one of the dreadful things about being an actor is that you can't ever take your name off your work. Directors can hide behind pseudonyms, producers can blame the director, and everyone else can throw up their hands and blame everyone else for letting them down. The actors however are stuck there up there, on screen for all the world to see, unable to hide from the awfulness that surrounds them. And this movie is awful.Most of the blame lies with the direction - not that there appears to have been any, and a script that may well have been, judging from what arrives on the screen, little more than a rough outline, semi-improvised by the actors as they were shooting. The whole thing looks like it was shot in single, unrehearsed takes with no one having bothered to tell the cast and the few background artists what was going on or what they were supposed to be doing.In short it looks like an amateur production and I can't begin to guess at the behind the scenes events that left reliably professional jobbing actors like Corbin Bernsen*, Glynis Barber, and Malcolm McDowell so helplessly adrift; I occasionally work with youth drama groups and have seen more conviction from bored High School kids than is on display here. Still, I guess the principals all got a nice holiday in South Africa out of it - though I don't suppose anyone involved in this turd will be including any part of it in their show reels.Having said all that my hyper-imaginative, six year old, fairy loving daughter was hooked throughout and genuinely terrified during the 'climactic' trapped-in-the-mine sequence, and even my four year old got 'the message'.*Bernsen also has to suffer the indignity of most incredibly underwritten, non-specific terminal disease in the history of movies since the Production Code of the thirties prevented anyone from mentioning the clap.

Maybe people do not like this movie, but my 10-year old son really likes it and has already seen it a few times, each time commenting on it and telling me about it endlessly. Although the story might be slightly lame and predictable, it is a regular feel good movie with lots of slightly moralistic moments, it is better then many other movies in the same genre I've seen. The storyline is indeed thin but since it is a fairy tale, that is part of the fun. The children act well, there is enough suspense in the air to stay interested for the whole time and in the end things do not seem what they looked like. In short, a family movie, well fitted for dreamers like my children.

I watched 'The Fairy King Of Ar' and thought it was a good movie to be watched by all the family!I like the idea of the story line and the special effects were very good!All in all it was a well Directed family movie!