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The Wind in the Willows
Jailed for his reckless driving, rambunctious Mr. Toad has to escape from prison when his beloved Toad Hall comes under threat from the wily weasels, who plan to build a dog food factory on the very meadow sold to them by Toad himself.
Release : | 1997 |
Rating : | 6.3 |
Studio : | Allied Filmmakers, Pathé Productions, Film Guild Productions, |
Crew : | Production Design, Director of Photography, |
Cast : | Terry Jones Steve Coogan Eric Idle Nicol Williamson Antony Sher |
Genre : | Adventure Fantasy Comedy Family |
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Reviews
Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.
It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...
When I first heard about this film, my first thought was - I'm going to hate it. I really like Monty Python, it had nothing to do with the fact that they were in it - I just thought I would hate it as I don't usually like it when animal characters are played by humans and don't look anything like the animals. Only when I watched this film (12 years after it was made) did I realize that was actually the point.Terry Jones is a fantastic Toad. He's got his personality and attitude to a T. Ditto for Badger, Ratty and Mole. The film is rather a comical version of the book, and whilst it stays along the same lines, there are a lot of changes of the storyline. Bits are added, and bits are removed...but I can say i was never once bored while watching this! Go ahead and check it out - I'm glad I did!
Hey, what's going on?I've been reading the reviews of this film, and can't understand the (over) reaction to it.This is a children's film. For children. Adults watching it who are not amused must have hearts of stone - even though it does not follow the current trend of having a subtext directed at the adult audience.And yet, other reviewers are comparing it to Monty Python, Pink Floyd, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, John Majors pre 97 UK - et al. This is ridiculous.It's a light hearted representation of the story which does not stick to the original text. I'm sure the author would have laughed in the right places. I've seen (a few) better films of the genre - I've seen many, many worse.The low points?the songsthe pet food factory plot (Why??)The high points?the fact the songs are very shortthe costumes (an eclectic mix of modern, Victorian, Edwardian, and Middles Ages which I think work really well).Toad's green face paintThe steam train.Anyway, my children, who can be deeply cynical of films like this, loved it. I laughed. End of story.
I am probably one of the six people who saw this on its first theatrical run in the US. Because of a complicated and ultimately stupid legal battle between distributors involving this and other films this film got so lost that the only promotional material available to the theater I saw it in was a picture from a newspaper, which they pasted into a much too big poster holder. To add insult to injury despite getting raves from the New York papers, all of which wondered why the distributor was dumping a wonderful "children's" film, a new distributor, Disney released it on video after changing its name to tie into their amusement park ride, there by confusing those of us who saw this as the Wind in the Willows.This film is a great film. Its simply a fantastic film comedy, never mind the stupid label of children's or family film, this is just great movie making.The only people I know who are disappointed in it are people expecting a Monty Python film. Although it pretty much reunites all of the surviving Pythons only Jones and Eric Idle are in it for any length of time, Cleese has one scene as a lawyer and Palin is fleetingly seen as the sun. The film is light years from Python, despite having just a touch of Python's madness.The humor is gentle and loving and keeping both with the period and with modern tastes. The songs are wonderful. Granted the story is changed to deal with the dangers of crass commercialism, the weasels want to turn Toad Hall into a factory, but having seen several version of the story told with people in costume, this is only one of two versions that has ever worked, and this one did it in half the time of the other.This is a film that will make everyone feel good and which despite the PG rating is great for everyone.
Fantastic family fun sees the Python team back on top form. Director Terry Jones (Who also writes and fantastically plays the part of Green - headed pink - cheeked fly - eating fantastically funny Toad in the film) sees the film to suit all ages. We've got a touching performance from Steve Coogan as heroic/overwimpy Mole, Overcooked portrayal of Rat from Eric Idle, and excellent performance from Nicol Williamson as Badger, and really cherrie performance from Michal Palin as the Sun. But by far the best performance was Antoney Sher's portrayal of the hissable Cheif Weasel. A real feast of cherrie popcorn fodder and tounges remain firmly in cheek throughout. Highly enjoyable.