Substitutiary locomotion it must be! (Bedknobs And Broomsticks (DVD))

Member Name: Fiver29

Product:	Bedknobs And Broomsticks (DVD)
Date:	13/04/09 (102 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun, inoffensive

Disadvantages: Poor effects, long dull songs

Film Only Review

Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a Disney film from the early 70's. It's set during the Second World War, and follows the story of three children (Charlie, Carrie and Paul) who are evacuated to Dorset and end up in the care of Miss Price (Angela Lansbury), who's a rather oddball spinster who leads a double life as a witch in training, courtesy of correspondence course run by Professor Emelius Browne (David Tomlinson).

The children find out about Miss Price's witch status, when they see her crash landing from her first broom flying attempt. In order to keep the secret she bribes them with a special item. She casts a travelling spell on a bed knob, which can only be used by Paul. However, Miss Price needs a more powerful spell which can only be given to her by Professor Browne, so using the bed to travel to London, Miss Price and the children set off on an adventure that takes them not only to London, but to the Land of Naboombu!

This is a musical in the same style as Mary Poppins, where the characters suddenly burst into song and extras start dancing at the drop of a hat.

Personally I think the film would have been better without the music, it's a relatively good story and the songs and the dance scenes just serve to drag it out. The songs aren't very good and not at all catchy, unlike the songs from similar films (Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, etc), so they soon become tedious, and they were met with groans of 'not again' from my kids.

I checked the date of the film before starting this review and was quite surprised to find out how late it was made, it came after the two films mentioned above, but the special effect are dreadful in comparison. You wouldn't expect them to be a patch on today's effects, and they're not. But I would have expected them to be of at least similar quality to those of films made before them.

For instance, when the bed is supposed to be travelling, all we are treated to is backgrounds of constantly changing colours, in a kind of hippy acid trip style. The mix of cartoon and real person on Naboombu was reasonably good, but still not great. Probably the best effects came in the final fight scene (which I won't say any more about, in case anyone hasn't seen it).

Angela Lansbury is pretty good as Miss Price although I can't help but wait for her to solve the mystery of the latest murder! David Tomlinson plays the professor in exactly the same way as he played the father in Mary Poppins, in fact if you came in half way through it'd take a few moments to realise which film you were watching.

The child actors are fine, but the Mockney accents are very grating, an it leaves you with the desire to give them elocution lessons.

There's a cameo appearance (although I don't know how well known he was at the time) from Bruce Forsyth, who is probably very fortunate that he didn't continue down the acting path, because he's the most cowardly mugger going.

Despite all this, it's quite a good film, and a nice family movie, there's nothing you can take offence at, although it has to have the scraggiest cat ever seen in a film lol.

Summary: Not the best of its era