Nate At The Movies

My weekend of kind of average movies continues! I didn’t really vibe with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma yesterday, and then I chased that with the lesser Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Seeing Tony on Thursday feels like a distant memory, so I was hoping to right the ship with The Magic Faraway Tree today. I’m a big Andrew Garfield fan, so even if the movie ended up being terrible, at least he’d be entertaining. Fortunately, he wasn’t the only good part of this surprisingly decent movie!

As I learned with The Sheep Detectives earlier this year, the English have a way of charming the hell out of people in their family movies (see also: every Paddington movie). The Magic Faraway Tree possessed much of that charm, both in Andrew Garfield’s delightfully silly performance, but also in the wonder and wanderlust of their children. I immediately loved Fran and her quiet, curious demeanor—shocker that I, the girl dad wannabe, gravitated towards her—but all three kids came around and held this story down. The band of Faraway Tree residents were more hit-or-miss for me, and some of them didn’t really get any development, but the world-building—especially the set and costume design—was stellar nonetheless.

The story—namely the parts in the Faraway Tree—felt very mishmashed and inconsequential, especially compared to the more straightforward, Andrew Garfield-inclusive real world narrative. I liked each episode in the Tree to varying degrees, but I most enjoyed how the kids’ lessons learned there applied to their relationships to each other and to their parents. It was the Thompsons’ imagination—their making the most of a bad situation—and their love of culturally confusing pasta sauce that I loved most, and that gave the movie its heart. Most of the narrative was pretty predictable and enjoyable, though there were a few moments near the end that either really warmed my heart (Moonface sort of reuniting with Tim) or really turned me off (whatever the heck Rebecca Ferguson was doing in this movie; she’s such a great actress, but this role was her second confusing outing of 2026, after Mercy).

The Magic Faraway Tree was the only movie that I saw this weekend that gave me exactly what I expected to get: a fun, lighthearted family film with uniquely British charm and a few solid messages for kids (they weren’t all good; were these kids made to believe that school is evil? As a teacher, I don’t agree). The movie had its share of flaws, but they can’t all be perfect; The Sheep Detectives stole all of the fairy dust this year. The Magic Faraway Tree may not end up being a regular in my kids’ carefully curated physical media library, but I wouldn’t be mad if I caught them checking this one out. I bet I’d watch it with them (pfft, like that’s a high bar to clear. I’ll watch anything).