Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

ctomvelu1 I'm not sure why anyone would want to watch this extremely unpleasant British drama, but so be it. British actress Helena B.C., who often takes on offbeat roles, plays a children's author named Enid Blyton. Blyton suffers from bipolar disorder, likely brought on by a miserable childhood in which her mother drove away her father. Blyton initially plans to be a teacher but finds she has a knack for writing about her favorite childhood fantasies, which clearly were meant to transport her out of her sad childhood. She marries her publisher, whom she eventually drives away, repeating the sins of her mother, and marries a much older man, clearly a father figure. For a children's author, she isn't much on children In fact, she can't stand her own children and eventually drives them away as well. When she finds herself preggers by her second husband, she finds a way to get rid of that child as well. Eventually, she lapses into full blown dementia and is reported to have died in the late 1960s. I thought at first she was a fictional character, but apparently there was a real Enid Blyton, who apparently was all the rage in Britain at one time. She apparently never caught on in the U.S. like her contemporaries, Enid Bagnold and Beatrix Potter. It may be that her writing was not up to theirs or that it didn't translate well with the American audience. As a writer with three daughters, I have spent countless hour in libraries and bookstores and never once come across her name. By the way, the real Enid Blyton was horse-faced, which makes me wonder why the filmmakers chose the somewhat attractive B.C. to play her. Nicely photographed and produced, but horribly unpleasant. Unless you like them that way, stay away. B.C. is of course marvelous as the mentally disturbed Blyton. She literally sinks her teeth into the role.

TheLittleSongbird When I was a child, I absolutely adored Enid Blyton's books; like Beatrix Potter's simple but charming, whimsical and beautifully illustrated stories, her books were full of characters I could relate to(ie. Silky from the Magic Faraway Tree stories), magical or exciting adventures and moments where I laughed and cried. At 17, I still have the utmost respect for her work, and while it was flawed, I liked this biographical drama.One definite plus was the way it was filmed, it was shot in a very sumptuous visual style that was most suitable. The costumes were ravishing, the scenery was breathtaking and the makeup was immaculate. The music score had parts that were a) haunting, b) poignant and c) hypnotic, the same effect that a minimalist score would have. I also liked the embedded references to her books, some as Enid sat at her typewriter, the script was well above average and the ending was somewhat moving.The acting is very well done. Both Matthew Macfadyen and Dennis Lawson turned in great work as Hugh and Kenneth, and to some extent I felt sorry for both their characters; Hugh because of the way Enid treated him and Kenneth because he was seemingly oblivious to what Enid was really like. Helena Bonham Carter looked beautiful and gave a wonderful performance. If I were to be honest though I prefer her more passionate and headstrong characters in A Room with a View and Howards End.It is here though where the flaws of this drama come. I think it was more to do with how she was written than how she was acted, but somehow I wasn't sure whether Enid was really that one-dimensional, here she is quite hypocritical and insensitive, then again it may be just me. Another problem if not so significant was that I felt some of the earlier scenes, particularly the scenes where Enid is a child, were a tad rushed.Overall, I generally liked this biographical drama, not perfect in my opinion but worth watching. 8/10 Bethany Cox

torriejtaylor I began watching this quite by accident and became so absorbed in Helena Bonham Carters performance it was impossible to turn it off.Helena Bonham Carter completely absorbs the role of Enid to such an extent it seems that she has been taken over by her. Enid Blyton is portrayed as self absorbed, selfish and a terrible mother which is quite true in reality, although some scenes have been added purely for the narrative.After having two children she becomes more absorbed in the lives of the children who write to her and love her books. She needs the reassurance of being idolised by these children who know nothing about her more than she cares for her own daughters. Her husband Hugh is driven to drink and another woman by her complete self absorbed behaviour and blatant disregard for him now he has served his purpose and been the one to have published her books. She meets another man and begins an affair with him, a doctor called Kenneth Darrell Waters. She asks her first husband for a divorce, ignoring her own adultery and using the children as a bargaining tool. He agrees on the understanding he can see the children whenever he wants and Enid initially agrees. She slowly begins to cut him out of her children's lives by destroying letters he sends them and saying the children are out when he telephones. When her youngest challenges her Enid accuses her of lying and simply send her off to boarding school.This is a very good film, even for people who are not fans of Enid Blyton's, purely for Helena Bonham Carter's breathtaking performance. I would highly recommend this to people.

robert-temple-1 This is a remarkable achievement in television film-making for the BBC. Helena Bonham Carter delivers yet another stunningly brilliant performance, which quite takes one's breath away. She truly 'becomes' the children's' writer Enid Blyton to a degree which even has one worried, as can she really turn back into Helena Bonham Carter again, after all that? As an actress generally, she just gets better and better (see my previous reviews of her films of recent years), and soon she may explode and become a kind of super-nova perhaps, scattering the screen with particles of light and stray atoms, building blocks of a future galaxy. (In any case, she is a star, whether she explodes or not. And she can certainly be seen at a distance of several light-years, even in her present state, without causing undue alarm to all those extraterrestrial observers who must be peering at her through their telescopes.) The director, James Hawes, who comes of the unlikely pedigree of some Dr. Who episodes and does not have a heavy-weight drama CV, turns out to be a serious quality drama director of immense skill and sensitivity. So well done Hawes, and may you let 'er rip as often as possible in that vein, which is clearly your true metier, as we can all now see. Wonderful performances are delivered by Matthew Macfadyen as Blyton's first husband and Denis Lawson as her second. It cannot be stressed strongly enough how easy it would have been for this biopic to go disastrously wrong. Everything depended on subtlety and impeccable judgement, all of which the director, the two writers, and the actors uniformly delivered to absolute perfection. Even the children in the film were superb, lacking all the annoying qualities of so many children in films and television these days. This film really does deserve several awards. It is so much better, for instance, than the over-rated feature films about Iris Murdoch which came out a few years ago, as well as the over-hyped '84 Charing Cross Road' of many years before, and several other similar attempts at films about authors. This film is simply sensational in its high level of achievement. As for the subject matter, it could not be more horrifying, but accurate, a portrayal of a famous children's' writer. Enid Blyton was an absolute monster of a human being, a hypocrite of cosmic proportions, and totally vile and disgusting as a person. (How could either of her husbands stand her even for a day? The first one clearly could not, which is why he turned to drink and stood looking stupefied at her, as if he were staring at an anaconda, which in fact he was, albeit one with a woman's face.) It is difficult to think of anyone other than Helena Bonham Carter who could have pulled this off with such sensitivity and delicacy, as this was a highly specialised assignment, playing Enid Blyton, and not to be undertaken lightly, or by anyone hackneyed and overly 'actor-ish'. The whole film and all the performances exude a powerful honesty, authenticity, and balance which are so difficult to achieve with an ensemble of people ranging from director to writers to performers and cameraman. It just all works so well. But why, oh why, did this appear on the tiny minority channel of BBC-Four, as if the idiots and morons who run BBC were ashamed of something of such high quality? They of course prefer such loathsome persons as Russell Brand and the unspeakably disgusting (pardon me while I am sick) Jonathan Ross. A change of government in Britain cannot come quickly enough, so that the BBC can be brought to its senses, its executives who lack any semblance of ability or competence can stop being paid more than hedge fund managers for doing nothing of any worth, and some kind of appreciation of public service broadcasting can be brought back again whereby magnificent films like this one will be given their due prominence on a main channel at peak time viewing. It gives one hope that there is still anyone out there capable of making a decent television film in Britain at the present time, other than Stephen Poliakoff of course, when the Philistines are so rampant and are in control of every inch of the high ground, and with culture on the run, harried by unrestrained and in-your-face mediocrity, idiocy, lack of taste, and vacuity, which are the hallmarks of the BBC in this year 2009. Hawes, Bonham Carter, and co. have taken a stand. We should drown them in little statues to go on their mantelpieces, to testify to how we appreciate what they have done. If only!