kgny309
When it comes to family movies, it has to be thoughtful, entertaining and capable enough to hold on to the audience between age 1 and 101. "Fairy Tale: A True Story" takes that challenge and it really succeeds.In 1917 England, two girls, Elsie {Florence Hoath} and her cousin Frances {Elizabeth Earl} discover real fairies in a garden. Later, they take photographs to give proof that the fairies are real. Soon, they become famous when Arthur Conan Doyle {Peter O'Toole} publishes the photos in Strand magazine."Fairy Tale" has the conflict of Human vs. Fantasy. The conflict connects with the film's theme, which is you must believe it unless you see the real thing. The center of the film's story is Elsie and Frances. They're two girls who really see things as it happen. They grab our attention along with the story.Ernie Contreras's unpredictable script makes the characters feel as human beings, not as cardboard people. There's even a cliché in the film with a reporter trying to get the real story behind the photographs, but it never gets annoying. Plus, there's a subplot with Frances's missing father which is handled well.Hoath and Earl each give fine performances. The supporting roles are handled nicely with O'Toole as Doyle and Harvey Keitel as magician Harry Houdini.Zbigniew Preisner's score gives a dreamy feel to the proceedings and Shirley Russell's World War period costumes are luscious.Delightfully photographed and wonderfully acted, Charles Sturridge's film is a charming, perfect and winning family film. This is a movie come true for all ages.Rating: ****
Jackson Booth-Millard
As the title says, this film is apparently, loosely anyway, based on the real life story of Cottingley Fairies, this story of course turned out to be fake, but this film at least creates the sense of realism felt at the time by many people, from director Charles Sturridge (Lassie). Basically, set in the early 20th Century, England, during the time that electricity and photography had been invented, many people have their own particular beliefs and become fascinated with phenomenas, including writer and Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O'Toole) and magician, escapologist and stunt performer Harry Houdini (Harvey Keitel). The daughter of devoted father Arthur (Paul McGann) and mother Polly (Phoebe Nicholls) who is grieving for the death of the son, twelve year old Elsie Wright (Florence Hoath), has kept her dead brother Joseph's scrapbooks and stuff that relate to fairies. She is joined by her cousin Frances Griffiths (Elizabeth Earl) who has come from abroad while her father goes into action during World War I, and the two of them become close friends, spending much of their time at the brook and near the stream. It is there that they supposedly occasionally see actual fairies, and borrowing Elsie's father's camera they capture two photographs of them together with these fairies, and these are meant as gifts for Polly. However she takes them to Theosophist lecturer Edward L. Gardner (Bill Nighy), who gets them analysed by a photography professional who can determine whether they are fake or not, and they are pronounced genuine, due to fairy wings moving. Many adults say that the girls could have faked the photographs, but more say that they may be real, including Conan-Doyle, and Houdini sees them too, and two more photographs taken allow publication in The Strand, creating a big buzz. The attention however comes from some unwanted sources, with hundreds of people crowding the village looking for fairies themselves, or the girls interacting with them, such as reporters, like John Ferret (Tim McInnerny). The girls have become celebrities when they travel to London, and they get to meet Houdini again, and see his water tank escape performance, and the film ends with him telling Elsie not to reveal anything, only to leave people to make their own minds up, there is a brief return from the fairies, and Frances' Father (Mel Gibson in a cameo) returns from war. Also starring Jurassic Park's Bob Peck as Harry Briggs, War Horse's Peter Mullan as Sergeant Farmer and Four Weddings and a Funeral's Anna Chancellor as Peter Pan. The acting is as good as you are going to get from terrific actors like Keitel, O'Toole and Nighy, and it is a pleasant story, obviously if you knew that the five captured photographs from the real girls were faked it would technically ruin your belief, but either way it is a nice tale that works with the fantasy element, and obviously the small special effects to create the fairies supposedly captured, of course in real life they were gift book cutouts LOL, a worthwhile period drama based on a true story. It won the BAFTA Children's Award for Best Children's Film. Good!
david-sarkies
When I watched this movie I was so tired that I slept through a part of it and didn't take in much of the other but from what I saw and from listening to others I picked up enough to comment on it. From what I heard this movie is based on some photographs taken in 1915 of some fairies. The photos could not be proved that they were faked and baffled a lot of people. What this movie has done is made the fairies real so as to create a child's movie.The plot is very thin but it is about people believing in fairies. The end comes with everybody seeing the evidence of the existence of fairies and believing in them. The thing is that the fairies play very little part in this movie and it is more focused on the children. The fairies never speak and interact with the children very rarely.This also seems to be an excuse to parade famous identities in the movie. We have Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini as major characters in the movie and even show Houdini performing some of his escapes. Doyle is said to have written a book on fairies which my friend wanted to look for. He also said that the soundtrack was relaxing. They liked it but I slept and really had little interest in this movie. These fairies were the beautiful children fairies which I do not like, when it comes to fairies I like Faeries. What is the difference? Faeries are the more adult versions and appear in Mid-summer Night's Dream and Faerie Tale. These are much more vicious and hostile, especially Titania and Oberon in Midsummer Night's Dream. Those I love, Fairy Tale I don't. Oh well, each to his own.
