The Secret Garden (1993)

That was an excellent one.

Thanks for the memories!

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Mary Lennox was born and raised in India before her parents died horrifically there. She is sent to England to live with her mysterious uncle in a large estate house. Maggie Smith played the housekeeper. Mary must learn to survive without her parents in this foreign land with strangers. The film does a surprisingly good job in showing how Mary changes. She befriends the servant child, Martha, and her brother. She learns about a family secret and a secret garden near the property.

Living in India, Mary Lennox, a young, privileged girl, is left orphaned when her parents are killed in an earthquake. She is sent back to England where she goes to live on her uncle's estate. It is a fairly isolated existence and she has to find things to keep herself occupied. She finds a sickly young boy...and a secret garden.A decent adaptation of the Frances Hodgson Burnett novel. Sweet and reasonably interesting. However, lacks a spark to make it overly engaging.On the other hand, the 1949 version was brilliant: enchanting with an air of mystery and wonder. The performances by the children were spot-on and the chemistry between them worked perfectly.For whatever reason, this version doesn't get to that level of enchantment and mystery, The children are okay, but not as likable as in the 1949 version. The air of mystery hardly existed and is extinguished pretty quickly.Overall: not bad, but not compelling viewing.

This is the story of a little girl who has little to be happy about. She is part of a British imperialist family in India who are killed by stampeding elephants. She is left to fend for herself until she is collected and sent to live in England. She acts out and is very unpleasant, but is tolerated. At some point she meets a young girl who sort of takes her under her wing and puts up with her tantrums. They find that there are places everywhere to explore in the big house and the grounds. They do from time to time hear some whimpering on the other side of a wall. Their investigations reveal a crippled boy who gets his only satisfaction watching others play. This sets up the rest of the film. Mary Lennox, the little girl, suddenly has some purpose in her life and that's what drives things to the conclusion. Of course, this is one of the world's greatest children's books.

I recently read THE SECRET GARDEN by Frances Hodgson Burnett and it was pretty obvious that the material doesn't lend itself to film very well. It's a slim novel almost entirely lacking in incident and action; rather, it's a mood piece, designed to bring to life a magical place and the characters who inhabit it. This 1993 adaptation tries hard to do justice to the book, but the results are mixed.I was pleased to see that although this was an American-made film, the entire cast are British. However, the actors are a mixed bag, and for a lot of the time they struggle with a sub-par script that makes the kids annoying. Yes, Mary was bratty in the book, but she never felt irritating like she does here. I didn't much care for Maggie Smith's poor Yorkshire accent either, although Walter Sparrow (ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES) is excellent as the gardener.Some parts of THE SECRET GARDEN are very good, like everything featuring the robin (I have the horrible suspicion that a modern version would simply CGI the bird) and the scenes that actually stick close to the book (and have the same dialogue in some cases). But in the effort to make the subject matter more cinematic, everything has to be bigger and grander, with random stone ruins within the garden. It was much smaller scale in the book, and some of the magic is lost. Also, they add in extraneous stuff like the stupid magic ritual, and Colin's father is NOTHING like he was in the book.