Why you can trust 12DOVE Our experts review games, movies and tech over countless hours, so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about our reviews policy.
On paper, adapting the children's fantasy classic by Railway Children author E Nesbit - the JK Rowling of 1906 - is a brilliant and commercially astute idea. Unfortunately, the Brit-film result is rarely better than pleasant, despite a cast boasting a manic Kenneth Branagh, a spritely Zoë Wanamaker and an underused Tara Fitzgerald.
David Solomon's screenplay takes vast, fatal liberties with the unimprovable source: deleting acres of plot, bumping the turn-of-the-century kids and their wish-granting sand fairy to World War One England and adding main characters (nasty fat boy, eccentric uncle, flying-ace dad) shamelessly filched from Harry Potter. An overbearingly `spooky' score, the ruthless pace and depressing, dated Henson's Creature Shop animatronics make for a thin, faintly cheap and largely unmagical experience.
So thank God for the brilliance of a cranky, free-wheeling Eddie Izzard, riffing madly away as the voice of the plastic-looking fairy. It's his film, stolen from well-spoken child actors who stand around in charming period costumes.
NOVERDICT
Nintendo Switch 2 launch price won't "really matter," analyst says, because early Nintendo buyers "aren't very price-sensitive" anyway – if it's not "egregious," it will sell
Nintendo Switch 2 leaks "essentially ruined the reveal" according to one analyst: "It was very unfortunate for Nintendo"
The Hollow Knight: Silksong ARG turned out to be us clutching at straws, but dev says: "the game is real, progressing and will release"
