When I was growing up in a different time and a different generation, back in the days when churning butter was a thing, before electricity, when dinosaurs were roaming the Earth, I loved to read books. I had plenty of children’s books, and because I read so voraciously, I moved fairly quickly up the age bracket, routinely reading material above my grade level, except for Goosebumps, which was just for fun. I definitely grew up in the Goosebumps generation. We were always presented with the summer reading list, and the goal was to check off as many books as possible, with my mom always making sure that I did. I remember so many wonderful children’s books from back in the day, reading about the Berenstain Bears, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, various books by Dr. Seuss, and a little bear named Corduroy. Simpler times meant that most kids’ books taught us some kind of life lesson or sought to spark our imagination.

Apparently, nowadays, we have stories like The Magic Faraway Tree, which have to deal with the fact that kids are spending an inordinate amount of time on their screens. There has to be some sort of motivation to get them off their butts and outside. The Magic Faraway Tree takes that challenge on by pitting humans against technology in an interesting way that eventually allows them to explore the fantasy world of the titular tree. When we’re first introduced to the Thompson family, mom Polly, played by Claire Foy, has just gotten fired, but also kind of quit, her job making smart refrigerators. She draws the line when she discovers that the reason the refrigerators are so smart is because there’s a camera inside spying on families. Because of course there is. Why wouldn’t there be? Why do you think the fridge is so smart? Why do you think it suggests a bottle of wine when you’re playing your favorite sad-song playlist off your smart speakers? It knows what you really want. It’s the only thing that actually understands you. The only thing in your life that knows exactly what you need at that moment. Wine. Chocolate. Ice cream. Judi Dench voices the refrigerator, by the way, which somehow makes this even better.

This unfortunate loss of employment sends the family into a downward spiral because Tim, played by Andrew Garfield, has been a stay-at-home dad to their three kids. Without Polly’s income, Tim suggests they finally go after their dream of living in the country, refurbishing a house and becoming tomato farmers. Tim grew up in the area, so he isn’t too far removed from the experience. Their oldest, Beth, played by Delilah Bennett-Cardy, is your typical teenage girl obsessed with having friends, socializing, and using technology to keep up with what’s hot and what’s not, so the soon-to-be lack of Wi-Fi is devastating to her social standing. The middle child and only boy, Joe, played by Phoenix Laroche, basically games all the time. That’s why he needs his internet and why he’s glued to a screen. The youngest, Fran, played by Billie Gadsdon, doesn’t talk. For the first part of the film, she just quietly moves through life, but she’s also the first one to head outside after they move to their new home and go exactly where the locals told her not to go: the woods.

Being the youngest child, Fran seemingly is the most susceptible to magic. She encounters some fairies and eventually discovers the Magic Faraway Tree. After she exclaims that she believes in magic, she gets to experience everything the tree has to offer. The tree is essentially a portal to dozens of different lands, each rotating in and out with its own setting and rules. You might go into the Land of Birthdays, for example, before returning to the hub of the Magic Faraway Tree and waiting to see what comes next. The core characters of the tree include Moonface, played by Nonso Anozie, who I’m glad to see in something else after Sweet Tooth, and Silky, played by Nicola Coughlan, a magnificent fairy who certainly lives up to her name. There’s also Saucepan Man, played by Dustin Demri-Burns, whose name seems pretty spot-on considering he’s covered in saucepans. Why? Nobody really knows. It’s that kind of movie.

Fran stays a little too long on her first adventure, and her family becomes worried and goes looking for her, but she eventually finds her way back out of the mysterious woods. Her parents are just happy to hear her speaking again, even though everything she tells them about fairies and magical lands sounds like nonsense. They make her promise that if she goes into the woods again, she has to take her brother or sister with her so she doesn’t get lost or fall into a hole or something, I guess. So the next time she goes, she takes both Beth and Joe. She has to convince them, without actually being able to show them any magic, to say they believe in magic before they can join her. Basically just to placate their little sister, they both say it, and suddenly the world of the Magic Faraway Tree opens to them too.

The amount of humans suddenly joining the tree annoys Moonface a little bit, as we eventually discover that he has a connection to a human from his past. The last time he let a human into his life and that person didn’t return, Moonface was emotionally devastated. Nevertheless, these kids start going on adventures, and it’s up to them and the residents of the tree to solve their problems and get everyone home. Beth makes a selfish wish at one point that threatens the family’s chances of staying where they are and remaining near the Magic Faraway Tree. Part of the film then becomes about trying to undo what Beth did in a shortsighted attempt to get back to her friends and her old life. There are lessons in here, but the movie thankfully doesn’t feel like it’s constantly beating children over the head with them.

It’s a charming film, and it was picked up by Vertical here in the States, which creates an interesting problem when it comes to audio description. Vertical tends to have audio description available theatrically for its films, but I never get those tracks with my screeners, and I have yet to encounter a Vertical film where I’ve been able to reliably follow that theatrical audio description downstream to its eventual PVOD or streaming release. I don’t know what happens to these tracks. That means that, in my experience, if you want to see something Vertical is releasing with audio description, the theatrical window may be your best opportunity. I’m openly admitting that I’ve never heard the audio description for The Magic Faraway Tree. My screener didn’t have it, and while I would expect a family fantasy film like this to receive audio description theatrically, I can’t review a track I haven’t heard. If you have blind or low-vision children interested in seeing the film, particularly if they’ve read the books, I would pay attention to accessible theatrical showtimes while they’re available.

Considering this is based on a series of books, I also wonder what kind of future The Magic Faraway Tree has as a film franchise. Vertical is primarily functioning here as the U.S. distributor rather than the company that actually made the movie, so this isn’t necessarily a studio launching its next giant franchise machine. But it’s pretty hard to ignore something if it becomes a runaway hit. If The Magic Faraway Tree suddenly became some enormous box-office phenomenon, I’m sure everyone involved would find a way to start talking about what comes next. That’s just how Hollywood works. The question is whether there’s an audience waiting for this particular property in the United States.

We’ve seen so many children’s books turned into movies over the years, whether you’re looking at Roald Dahl adaptations like Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Wonka, or things like The Borrowers, Bridge to Terabithia, The Chronicles of Narnia, and countless others. They seem to come and go, even when the source material itself is iconic. Looking at some of the books I grew up with, it feels kind of weird to think that E.B. White’s Stuart Little has already come and gone, and this iconic little mouse doesn’t seem to be trying particularly hard to make a resurgence into the lives of current children. Somehow Paddington is still going strong. I guess it all depends on what books parents are reading to their kids at exactly the right time and whether there’s still an audience for them when Hollywood finally decides to make the movie. For every How to Train Your Dragon that becomes a phenomenon, there’s something like Netflix’s Uglies, where the adaptation simply doesn’t connect and the presumed fan base doesn’t show up.

I liked the performances from all three kids. I’ve seen some people be critical of them, and I’m not entirely sure why. They’re perfectly fine at being kids. Even without audio description, I didn’t have a problem with any of the acting here. Garfield and Foy make for appealing parents, and the supporting cast is loaded with people like Rebecca Ferguson, Jennifer Saunders, Jessica Gunning, Nicola Coughlan, and Nonso Anozie, who all understand exactly what kind of movie they’re in. Judi Dench voicing the refrigerator is a brief role, but considering Dench also spent some time as one of the celebrity voices available through Meta AI, I suppose being the disembodied voice of a suspiciously intelligent household appliance isn’t that far of a leap.

I’m not sure The Magic Faraway Tree is a blockbuster in the making, but then again, I’m a 43-year-old man and I don’t have kids, so it’s hard for me to figure out whether children are excited about something when I don’t even know if they’re reading the books. Parents will know if this is right for them. Kids have already had plenty to see this summer, jumping between major franchises and familiar characters, and The Magic Faraway Tree is trying to squeeze itself into that conversation without having the same immediate brand recognition. These kinds of family films, much like romantic comedies, dramas, and basically anything that doesn’t immediately scream blockbuster, could easily start getting shoveled straight to streaming, leaving more and more gaps in the opportunities families have to actually take their kids to the theater.

The Magic Faraway Tree reminds me of the kind of story that I always dreamed of being able to share with my kids, though I don’t have any. Just because someone is childless doesn’t mean they never thought about having kids or wanted to have them. So often I see something like this and think, maybe someday, because maybe someday. You never know. I would put The Magic Faraway Tree on my list of things I’d want to see with my kids. If you read these books to yours, take them to the theater to see the film. If you have no idea what this is and you have kids, I think they’ll enjoy it. If you’re just an adult, I think you might enjoy it too, provided you’re willing to live in a world of childlike fantasy for a couple of hours. It’s not an instant classic, and it doesn’t redefine the genre, but even without audio description on my screener, for a film so heavily rooted in fantasy, it entertained me enough that I’m willing to send you to The Magic Faraway Tree so you can say that you believe in magic too.

Fresh: 6.8/10