The Railway Children Return review – family classic sequel stays on track

Jenny Agutter turned a British cinema hall-of-famer as Roberta, or Bobbie, within the much-loved 1970 household basic The Railway Kids, about three kids compelled by circumstance to maneuver with their mom to a cottage in Yorkshire and have adventures involving steam trains. She returned to play the mum in a 2000 TV film model, and now Agutter is again as her authentic character, 40 years older, on this sparky sequel imagining a brand new era of railway kids in 1944, a reboot devised and co-written by producer Jemma Rodgers and directed by Morgan Matthews.

Possibly it’s a bit self-conscious in the best way it revives and reimagines the basic plot factors, and there could possibly be historic authenticity points. Would US military army police actually have been allowed to arrest an underage British civilian and transport her throughout nation in handcuffs? However there’s a good bit of enjoyable, channelling bygone classics corresponding to Hue and Cry and Whistle Down the Wind.

Three evacuee youngsters from wartime Manchester, Lily (Beau Gadsdon), Pattie (Eden Hamilton) and Ted (Zac Cudby) fetch up in precisely the identical village the place Roberta has apparently stayed on and is now a kindly grandmother: her daughter (Sheridan Smith) is the headteacher of the native college and has a barely Simply-William-ish son known as Thomas (Austin Haynes), whose dad is away within the RAF combating the Germans. Railway Kids followers could also be forgiven for questioning if any extra legacy characters from the unique movie are going to be revived, or if we’ll discover out if Bobbie actually did marry Jim, grandson of the “Outdated Gentleman” within the first story, as appeared seemingly. Nicely, suffice it to say we uncover that Bobbie turned a satisfied suffragette as a younger lady and, on these grounds, comes very near the blasphemy of disagreeing with Winston Churchill. Now it seems the household apparently have a kindly previous uncle, or great-uncle, performed by Tom Courtenay, who’s one thing hush-hush within the Warfare Workplace.

Lily, Pattie and Ted roam across the place with their new good friend Thomas, getting concerned in scrapes with the native youngsters who resent them, they usually get to know the peppery stationmaster Richard, performed by John Bradley. However the grownups are conscious of stress with the American army police who’ve a racist angle to the African American GIs who’re well-liked within the village. This grownup downside turns into a actuality within the kids’s lives once they discover a wounded, shivering black American soldier hiding in one of many railway engines in a siding; that is Abe (Kenneth Aikens), who sternly tells them he’s on a secret mission they usually should not on any account inform anybody that he’s there. Earnestly, the 4 kids fetch him meals and provides and agree to cover him of their home.

It is a movie with a contact extra savvy about the true world than its 1970 forebear, at the least partly as a result of it has baby actors who’re the identical age as their characters. The now legendary scene from the primary movie through which Bobbie sees her daddy by the steam on the railway platform – a scene which has turn into extra iconic than its creators ever fairly envisaged – is echoed and doubled in a brand new dream that Lily has, in a way more severe context. And there are extra shenanigans involving holding up indicators to a passing prepare and getting it to cease. It’s an amiable and ingenious tribute to the harmless, good-natured spirit of the unique.