James Hall

Got an extra star for the awesome steam trains, but the overall film is very weak, cliched and stilted in story, dialogue and acting. The whole BLM narrative feels especially jarringly out of place and does both the story and the BLM cause a massive dis-service. It's a huge shame as the original is a classic, while this feels like it was written by committee of people with a check list of topics that needed to be covered. The original does a beautiful job of focusing on the hope in the crisis the children were going through, whilst this film awkwardly stumbles through very gritty subjects such as separation and parental death. Plus, it was very difficult to have any empathy for the situation as the characters lacked any depth. However the only review that really matters was from my 2 children (8 and 11) who both really disliked it and would only give it one star.