Swallows and Amazons

I grew up with this film and these stories, I loved them and it was about time that they remade the film just because the previous film is now dated. There was nothing wrong with the previous film and I have to admit that I don't remember it well enough to compare the start of the films but the most notable thing was the ending- in the original there was an accordion and a round of 'What do you do with the drunken sailor' and this was non existent in this film.

Rafe Spall (the son of Timothy Spall) took on the adult part of Captain Flint, the spy who is being hunted by our favourite Sherlock Holmes villain James Moriarty ( Andrew Scott- SPECTRE, Alice Through the Looking Glass), a Russian agent. The children were all probably slightly older than the characters they were playing with the most obvious one being John Walker ( Dane Hughes) who's physique gave him away as being older than 14 which was probably the limit for the boy in the book. The casting was fantastic as all of the Walker children (made up of Dane Hughes, Orla Hill, Teddie- Rose Malleson- Allen and Bobby McCulloch) looked like each other, had the same hair colour and the same complexion. They looked more like a family than the Pevansee children from the 'Narnia' trilogy.

Kelly Macdonald ( Nanny McPhee) appeared as the mother, with the father famously not being present in the film at all. For the effort gone in to the children looking like each other I have to say that I am slightly disappointed that they didn't really look anything like their mother- wrong hair colour, no accent and anyone that can remember her part as Evangeline in 'Nanny McPhee' will probably remember her complexion and agree with me that they were just about passing it off- they didn't really look like a family once you had added her in to the mix. The youngest children were probably the best as more scrutiny fell on Dane Hughes as he had the most emotion to show and didn't always manage it. I said to my mother upon leaving the cinema that if I had been him, when I was being falsely accused of things I would have been much more defiant than he was and most children probably would be. I think that sometimes directors don't give children a proper license to be children in their movies, they want them to play a character and stick to it without remembering that children respond to things in a different way to adults and even an older child like him, who has been charged with the responsibility of the other children would not just stand there and take all those lies, he would stick up for himself and his actions.

The film was very enjoyable, more enjoyable than I can make out because I managed to enjoy it even whilst the paramedics were in the room dealing with someone that needed assistance. If you can still enjoy something after all that then it is a better than 'good' film. Take your family or friends, have a few laughs and have a nice day out, it will be a different type of day out than the one which normally involves late night screenings of DC or Marvel films.