The Borrowers
UK/USA. 1997. Director - Peter Hewitt, Screenplay - John Kamps & Gavin Scott, Based on the Novels by Mary Norton, Producers - Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner & Rachel Talaly, Photography - Trevor Brooker & John Fenner, Music - Harry Gregson-Williams, Score Producer - Hans Zimmer, Visual Effects Supervisor - Peter Chiang, Digital Visual Effects - The Digital Film Co & The Magic Camera Co (Supervisor - Alan Marques), Special Effects Supervisor - Digby Milner, Production Design - Gemma Jackson, Supervising Art Director - Jim Morahan. Production Company - Working Title Films. John Goodman (Ocious P. Potter), Flora Newbigin (Arrietty Clock), Jim Broadbent (Pod Clock), Bradley Pierce (Pete Lender), Mark Williams (Exterminator Jeff), Tom Felton (Peagreen Clock), Raymond Pickard (Spiller), Celia Imrie (Homily Clock), Hugh Laurie (Officer Steady), Aden Gillett (Joe Lender), Doon Mackichan (Victoria Lender)
Plot: The Clock family are Borrowers, tiny people who live hidden inside the walls of a human house and secretly sneak out to borrow objects for their own use. Teenage Arrietty is found by and befriends a human boy, Pete Lender, just in time to learn the human owners are being evicted and the house to be demolished by lawyer Ocious P. Potter. Pete's attempt to move them goes wrong and Arrietty and her brother are left behind where they witness Potter obtaining the deed that rightfully belongs to the Lenders. Grabbing it, they are then frenetically pursued by Potter who brings in an exterminator to put them down at all costs.
This is the third adaption of Mary Norton's popular series of children's books about the adventures of a family of tiny people who live in the wainscotting of a human house. The first book was first published in 1952 and led to four sequels between then and 1982. The first film adaption was a little seen production made in 1973 about which I can find next to no information. The second and best was two sets of six-part half-hour British-made tv serials which aired in 1993 and 1994 respectively, adapting the first four books under the umbrella title `The Borrowers'. The British serials and this 1997 Anglo-American co-production make for interesting comparisons. The tv serials had a quiet sense of wondrous adventure that was balanced with a droll understatement in a way that was quite sublime. On the other hand this film, while retaining the basic idea and the same principal characters, has thrown out most other semblances to turn the books into a big-screen special effects extravaganza. Case in point being the scene where Arrietty befriends the human boy and introduces him to her parents - the first serial took several episodes to develop the friendship before it was found out by her parents; the film doesn't even bother with the scene of taking him to meet her parents but simply cuts from Pod saying he will never accept the idea to the boy placing them in a box to be moved. Here the books have been reworked to turn them into a take on `Home Alone', with John Goodman having been written in as an odious lawyer whose sole purpose is to act as a slapstick butt of the ingenuity of the little people.
But if one is prepared to take the film on this level, it does such with a considerable degree of energy and visual invention. The balance of big and small sets and special effects is amazingly good and there are some delightful set-pieces with characters trapped on lit lightbulbs; pole-vaulting across sinks, skidding along pieces of soap and trampolining off appliance handles to get across a kitchen; becoming trapped inside the fridge in an attempt to steal ice-cream; and enthralling scenes racing to avoid the villain as he smashes a hammer through the wall and so forth. But the film is only really constructed around these effects set-pieces and, while it entertains a good deal, one wishes it had slowed a little to allow the story more time.
There is a rather bizarre design scheme to the whole film which tries to create a fantastacized 1950s Midlands industrial city landscape - sort of like a combination of `Coronation Street' (if one can imagine `Coronation Street''s brick backstreets with airships moored above them) and the Gothic industrial nightmare city out of the first `Batman' film (but with the lights turned up). And in a gag that has been stolen directly from Peter Jackson's `Meet the Feebles' all the vehicles in the film are Morris Minors, including the joke of having the villain of the piece ride in a black stretch Morris Minor.
Reviewed by Richard Scheib
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