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Too much of everything

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

When you start fast-forwarding, you know it's bad.I picked this movie off of Netflix expecting it to be a pleasant children's cartoon. Thankfully I have learned to pre-screen things, because this movie was absolutely terrible.Human misery, death, and suffering are not my idea of a children's story. This movie basically starts with a homeless woman begging for money for her newborn baby so they won't starve. We are then shown people stealing, beating each other, cheating, and human excrement being poured over food--all before we meet the men who are abusing our hero, Tom.All of this, meanwhile, is live-action. You have to sit through about twenty minutes of this awful display of inhumanity before you finally get to the cartoons you thought you were getting when you started, and then there's another 20 minutes of live action at the end, making for half the movie. I don't know about your kids, but when my kids want a cartoon, they want a cartoon. Not a bunch of folks wandering around London getting typhoid.The live-action plot then drags on and on with more of the cruelty. Finally Tom jumps in a lake and is--for no reason ever explained in the movie--transformed into an animated "water baby." I suppose that's a bit nicer than saying "Hey kids, he committed suicide and drowned." He makes some friends, sings some songs, encounters some random enemies, and finally finds the other water babies. This is the good part of the movie. But then the other water babies are randomly kidnapped, and Tom must go on a quest to save them.Tom then returns to the human world, where he is again abused and you wonder why he doesn't just kick someone in the groin already and run off. Finally he does stand up for himself, the bad guys are arrested and he achieves a Dickensian happy ending, which honestly I never did quite manage to understand (did rich people just adopt random street urchins?) and we learn that several creepy ladies who've been appearing randomly throughout the film are actually the same person, which doesn't actually add anything to the plot or make any sense.As a parent, I have seen plenty of bad children's shows. Heck, I've endured Barney the Purple Dinosaur. But this movie takes the cake. Yes, Victorian England was a terrible place in which children were abused and death might seem like a reasonable escape. This does not make it 'entertaining', for me or my children.

High! High! High! Cockalorum! La La la la la la! look 'Waterbabies' fans. if you want to put this movie up on a pedestal as a High! High! High! work of art, then you should know your 'Waterbabies' facts.i thought this movie was pretty good. i can't say i know the entire iconology or pre-production history of 'Waterbabies' like some of it's enthusiastic fan base, but i did think it had a lot of quality for a kiddie flick. good production values, a good cast, and high! high! high! standard hand drawn animation. can't say i ever heard of this film when i was growing up, but there was more to it than i would have guessed. i mean it had culture, it was based on Charles Kingsley's classic poem for babies.some people attacked the hand animation as being bad. come'on. anyone who knows good hand drawn ani. can look at this and tell it wasn't cheap. even the character design preceded stuff like 'A shark's Tail'.this movie was not ghastly or butt clenchingly bad, like some 'Waterbabies' haters would have you think. it was just gnaw on the chipmunk really weird. it did kind of freak me out a bit (i was really high! high! high! however) and the numerous reps of 'High Cockalorum' did make me want to run from my TV screaming. but this movie had high! high! high! production standards for a kiddie flick.basically 'Waterbabies' was about believing. in waterbabies that is. i mean they could exist couldn't they? maybe they're like loch nessie or that big foot thing. i personally think they are related to sea monkeys. sea monkeys are real right? i saw sea monkey's with me own eyes when i was little so i know they exist. i think i'll have another doobie and contemplate this. 'Baby' fanz sing! high! high! high! Cockalorum!

The 1978 adaptation had all the ingredients of a potentially wonderful film. It is based on an absolutely charming book by Charles Kingsley. It has a truly talented cast from the likes of James Mason, Bernard Cribbons and David Tomblinson, not to mention the vocal talents of David Jason and Jon Pertwee. There is also Lionel Jeffries, the director of wonderful classics such as The Railway Children and the Amazing Mr Blunden, and while the film is good on the most part, it was also a little disappointing. I had no problem with the performances, particularly those of Mason and Tomblinson as Grimes and Sir John Harriet respectively, and Tommy Pender and Samantha Gates are believable as Tom and Ellie. Billie Whitelaw is also intriguing in numerous roles, even if one or two of them are quite bizarre. The voice cast is also commendable, especially Jon Pertwee, voicing charming characters in their own right. I also liked the incidental music it is so haunting and beautiful, and the script was fairly faithful and in general well-written, particularly at the beginning. The characters, especially the Water Babies are very charming, and the villains are sinister and funny at the same time, I loved the part when Tom and his friends help the Water Babies escape, seeing the shark chasing the electric eel with an axe was very funny. However, I will say the film does look dated, especially the animation sequences, the live action parts weren't so bad, if you forgive the rather dark camera-work. The character animation was rather flat, and the backgrounds sometimes were a little dull, though there were some nice moments, like the scene with the Krakon and of course the first meeting with the Water Babies. I also had mixed feelings about the songs, the Water Babies's song was beautiful, but I found the first song forgettable, when Tom ends up underwater. Hi-Cockallorum is an example of a song, that is like marmite, you either love it or hate it. I personally don't know what to make of this song, it was fun to listen to at first, but once it's in your head, it is perhaps annoying. As much as I like Lionel Jeffries and his films, his direction just lacked the wonder and the magic it usually does. All in all, certainly not a terrible film, but could have been better artistically. 7/10 Bethany Cox.

I watched this film from childhood - perhaps one of the first I ever saw (released when I was born)...I'm surprised it's marketed as a children's film, there are many aspects of this film to which children should be ignorant. The best actor by far is David Tomlinson, never failing to bring a smile to my face. As for the rest of the cast - Very odd indeed.I would not recommend this film personally. It looks dated, and the songs are pretty repetitive. I suggest Mary Poppins or Bedknobs and Broomsticks for children. Also, it would be difficult to locate this film nowadays, it never was released on DVD to my knowledge. The above films present a far more relaxed environment: With this film, it's hard to tell. I can tell that I am not the only one that feels this way about the film, but I still respect it, as I watched it at childhood and it was the first "scary" film I ever saw!Five out of Ten.