Producer: Jemma Rodgers Director: Morgan Matthews Screenplay: Danny Brocklehurst Cast: Beau Gadsdon, Jenny Agutter, Sheridan Smith, K.J. Aikens, Austin Haynes, Eden Hamilton, Zac Cudby, John Bradley, Hugh Quarshie, Jessica Baglow, Joseph Richards, Neil Hurst and Tom Courtenay Distributor: Blue Fox Entertainment
Grade: C
In 1970 actor Lionel Jeffries wrote and directed a film adaptation of Edith Nesbit’s 1906 novel “The Railway Children” that was warmly welcomed in Britain, though it made little impression in the U.S. It was remade for British television in 2000, a version broadcast as an installment of PBS’ “Masterpiece Theatre” that same year. There have also been plenty of other adaptations for radio, television and the stage.
This new film written by Danny Brocklehurst, titled “The Railway Children Return” in England, isn’t so much a remake as a quasi-sequel. Nesbit’s book, and Jeffries’ film, concerned three children who moved with their mother from London to the rural countryside after their father had been wrongfully convicted of spying. This one, directed by Morgan Matthews (“x+y,” also known as “A Brilliant Young Mind”), is set in 1944, when three children—teen Lily Watts (Beau Gadsdon) and her younger siblings Pattie (Eden Hamilton) and Ted (Zac Cudby)—are sent by their mother from Manchester to the bucolic village of Oakworth while their father is off in the war. They’re taken in by Bobbie Waterbury (Jenny Agutter, who played the oldest child in the 1970 film and the children’s mother in the 2000 remake) and her daughter, school principal Annie (Sheridan Smith), whose husband is also in the army, as well as Annie’s young son Thomas (Austin Haynes).
The newcomers face some local hostility, especially from classroom bully Georgie Duckworth (Joseph Richards) and his chums, as they try to accommodate themselves to their new situation. But they enjoy running around with Thomas and being introduced to the chickens the family keeps, learning to collect the eggs. They even horse around with Annie, who good-naturedly goes along with their antics—at least until she gets some bad news from the war office about her husband, who’s gone MIA.
But oddly enough the thrust of the story shifts fairly quickly to another character—Abe McCarthy (K.J. Aikens)—an African-American boy who has gone AWOL from the U.S. military because of racist treatment by MPs. The Watts children and Thomas find him hiding in an abandoned rail car Thomas has fixed up as a clubhouse, and become his protectors, initially because he tells them a whopper about being on a secret mission and then when they learn about his age (fourteen) and mistreatment.
The effort to conceal Abe from the authorities—and all adults—has its predictably close calls, a few involving a new arrival at the Waterbury house, elderly Uncle Walter (Tom Courtenay), who brings news about progress in the war, and eventually leads to Abe and Lily being caught. As they’re being transported by train, the film pivots to mimic a famous moment from the original, when Lily’s siblings enlist the other local children in flagging down the train, here so they can ask for help from the American general aboard it (Hugh Quarshie). The fact that he happens to be African-American too signals the decision he’ll take. (The motive behind the children’s action in the original is, of course, quite different.)
That incident, and the introductory trip from Manchester to Oakworth, during which the Watts kids outsmart the guy who’s overseeing the brood of kids going to the countryside from the city, are the major story elements involving moving trains. But along with them there’s enough action set in the junkyard where Thomas’ clubhouse is located, and footage of the officious stationmaster (John Bradley) who turns out to have a very good side, to justify the “railway” part of the title.
Obviously Brocklehurst has concocted a sweet story with a strong moral about the mistreatment of African-American citizens in the World War II U.S. army and, by extension, American society at the time. But while the “children” part of the script works nicely despite the amateurish performances delivered, under Matthews’ rather lax direction, by many of the youngsters in the cast (not, it should be empathetically noted, Gadsdon, who’s thoroughly professional, though Aikens often seems ill-at-ease), the didactic plot about bigotry is heavy-handed, in both conception and execution.
Still, the presence of some fine adult actors like Agutter, Smith and Courtenay (who gets to deliver a speech Churchill-style) helps to keep things steady, though Quarshie is terribly stiff as the general who finally settles matters. Adding to the good points is the generally effective period look courtesy of Jeff Tessler’s production design and Dinah Collin’s costumes; and Kit Fraser’s cinematography adds a glow to the images. Rebecca Lloyd’s editing, however, isn’t ideally smooth, and the score by Edward Farmer and Martin Phipps is too effusively nostalgic in tone.
Flaws and all, this new “Railway Children” would be a perfectly agreeable family television movie suitable for broadcast on a Sunday afternoon. As a feature release in theatres, though, it’s a very old-fashioned throwback to a simpler time that’s no likelier to capture the imagination of American audiences than its 1970 inspiration did.