Review of Tom's Midnight Garden

I was fully expecting to hate this film as I usually hate film adaptations of books I have liked (viz. The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe), but after two minutes I still hadn't switched it off and after ten I was hooked. Yes, there were things that could have been done better but I thought all told, they did a pretty good job. Of course the scenery was beautiful (which seems to have really appealed to some of the reviewers on this site) but I don't think that was the only thing this adaptation had to offer. It stuck pretty closely to the original story (much more than most film adaptations of books) and I don't think it is fair to criticize it for not developing the characters very much - as I remember the book (and it was a very long time ago that I read it so I might be wrong), the characters aren't developed very deeply in that either, and for a very good reason - the story is about a friendship between two people, which for one of them lasts about a month (I guess) and for the other lasts a a whole childhood but spread very thinly. Their meetings are very brief and the two main characters never know very much about each other, until the very end, and so I think if the film had tried to develop their characters any more, this site would have been full of reviewers (possibly including me) howling about them ruining the story by making it what it isn't. As for the other characters (the Aunt and Uncle, Hattie's Aunt and cousins, the gardener), they aren't developed very much in the book either (I did like the gardener and as I remember the book he was the only other person in Hattie's world who could see her, so they got that right). I don't think there is any 'love story' (as one harsh critic states) between Hattie and Tom, either in the book or in this version, just a very deep friendship. I think Tom could have been cast a bit better (slightly younger) but I think he is supposed to be an awkward, gawky teenager, probably slightly young for his age anyway. I thought the other casting was excellent, especially the two Hatties. I don't agree with the critic who thought the present-day beginning and end spoiled it, and I definitely don't agree with the reviewer (who I don't think had read the book) that the meeting with Mrs Bartholomew at the end spoiled it. That bit was very well done I think and possibly improved on the book. Maybe I liked it because I didn't really like the book all that much when I read it as a child - I thought it was nothing compared to "A Traveller in Time" (I think the working class hero of a couple of reviewers ago might like A Traveller in Time a lot more - the narrator comes from a much more ordinary background if I remember correctly.) I do hope no-one decides to make a film version of that (unless they employ me as a script adviser of course)(of course there was a brilliant TV version (BBC I think) when I was a kid). The main thing that spoiled it for me was the fact that Future TV (the Lebanese channel I saw it on) don't pause the films when they have an advert break.