I’ve always had a fondness for Enid Blyton’s books; I grew up with the Famous Five, the Wishing Chair and of course the Faraway Tree in my bookcase and read and re-read them constantly. This movie adaptation of the Faraway Tree stories comes from the pen of Simon Farnaby, screenwriter of Paddington 2 and Wonka, and is similar in style and tone.

The story introduces the Thompson family: mum and dad (Claire Foy and Andrew Garfield) are worried that their three kids are missing out on a traditional childhood. Eldest Beth is stuck on her phone all day, Joe is addicted to online gaming, and youngest Fran is becoming withdrawn and refusing to even speak. So they up sticks and move to a dilapidated barn in the countryside, which just so happens to be right next to an enchanted wood in which the magical Faraway Tree sits. It’s Fran who first stumbles across the Tree and its fantastical occupants, led by the insecure pixie Silky (Nicole Coughlan), pompous but kindly Moon Face (Nonso Anozie), and the hard-of-hearing Saucepan Man (Dustin Demri-Burns), and she soon convinces her siblings to join her.

All of this setup is of course - as in the books - a springboard for the kids and their new friends to go on adventures in various “lands” that the Tree is connected to - like the Land of Goodies, where sweets grow on trees, or the Land of Birthdays where wishes come true. By visiting them and having adventures, the three kids slowly learn how to “be kids” again, or at least how to function without wi-fi! The Lands are brightly lit, fantastically designed, and the scenes of the kids exploring them are wonderful. The inhabitants of the Lands are excellently played: Mark Heap as the loud, obnoxious Mr. Oom Boom Boom and a welcome cameo by Michael Palin and Lenny Henry as aged know-it-alls are highlights.

These fantasy sequences are arranged around the more grounded family troubles set up in the opening scenes. Garfield and Foy are fairly sweet as parents just trying to muddle through and provide for their children, and a subplot featuring a bizarrely-accented Jennifer Saunders as their disapproving grandmother is fun enough. But the movie is after all called “The Magic Faraway Tree”, and I was surprised by how often the movie cuts away from the Tree and its Lands, While it’s entertaining to see Andrew Garfield in bumbling-dad mode, the framing device of family drama is nothing that hasn’t been done before (and better) in movies like Mary Poppins and its recent sequel.

Late in the story, the kids and friends become trapped in the Land of Dame Snap, with Rebecca Ferguson in full scenery-chewing mode as the maniacal schoolmistress. The script takes the opportunity to comment on modern edits to Blyton’s original stories by having Dame Snap herself complain that she used to be called “Dame Slap” but had to change it as corporal punishment is frowned upon by school inspectors these days! This I thought was a clever way to poke a little fun at the situation, and also at the mountains of hand-wringing articles in the tabloids complaining about these edits being “political correctness” that have appeared over the years.

Altogether The Magic Faraway Tree is an entertaining family movie, which succeeds despite the unevenness between the family-based framing and the adventures in the Tree itself. Certainly there’s source material enough to provide far more adventures than we see here, and the ending does come rather abruptly; although I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for a sequel, the way is left open, and I would love to see more.

You can read more of my movie reviews on Letterboxd.