Imagine, if you will, the Story Warehouse. This is where storytellers collect the various bits and pieces which they then assemble into stories. We go past the Romance and Horror sections and arrive at Magic, where we find the shelves fairly empty. Some items are always in stock - you can always pick up Orphaned Child Sent To Live In Run-Down Old House Where Strange Things Happen With No Explanation, for instance, and there's never any shortage of Slightly Sinister Patriarch Figure Who Flies Into Rage For No Good Reason And Won't Answer Questions, or Quirky Manservant With Fantastic Abilities (I'll take two, please). The Magic Lions section was pretty much cleaned out by CS Lewis for the Narnia stories, of course, although it appears that he didn't have much call for Magic Lion (Black Fur) or Magic Lion (Disguised As Big Dog).
And that is the problem with The Secret Of Moonacre - the story has a strong feeling of having been cobbled together from bits and pieces, and those bits and pieces are either overly familiar - Ioan Gruffud's mysterious bad-tempered uncle is no stranger - or else simply not very good (clearly a great deal was left on the Moon shelves - we have Moon Pearls, Moon Princesses, Moonacre itself, the Moon coming down to destroy everything). Much which needs explaining is never explained, and the bits of the story simply don't fit very well together. It's as if by combining the legs from a flat-pack table and the carcase from a flat-pack kitchen unit you can make a sideboard. Well, yes, but I don't think I'd want it in my living room.
And this is a shame, because the look of the film is fine, as is Dakota Blue Richards. Gruffud and Tim Curry both deliver their cliché characters perfectly adequately, Juliet Stephenson is given a comedy nanny to play with rather uncomfortably, and Natasha McElhone looks wonderful and acts, at times, embarrassingly badly (she delivers a curse with a complete absence of menace, for instance. Clearly, cheekbones on their own are not enough).
I sometimes wonder why film producers still don't seem to understand that a solid story and script is the starting point for a successful movie.
And that is the problem with The Secret Of Moonacre - the story has a strong feeling of having been cobbled together from bits and pieces, and those bits and pieces are either overly familiar - Ioan Gruffud's mysterious bad-tempered uncle is no stranger - or else simply not very good (clearly a great deal was left on the Moon shelves - we have Moon Pearls, Moon Princesses, Moonacre itself, the Moon coming down to destroy everything). Much which needs explaining is never explained, and the bits of the story simply don't fit very well together. It's as if by combining the legs from a flat-pack table and the carcase from a flat-pack kitchen unit you can make a sideboard. Well, yes, but I don't think I'd want it in my living room.
And this is a shame, because the look of the film is fine, as is Dakota Blue Richards. Gruffud and Tim Curry both deliver their cliché characters perfectly adequately, Juliet Stephenson is given a comedy nanny to play with rather uncomfortably, and Natasha McElhone looks wonderful and acts, at times, embarrassingly badly (she delivers a curse with a complete absence of menace, for instance. Clearly, cheekbones on their own are not enough).
I sometimes wonder why film producers still don't seem to understand that a solid story and script is the starting point for a successful movie.