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FAIRY TALE: A TRUE STORY
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2
Right before the ending credits roll, the fairies gather for a massive panoply of color. Why the screenwriter wasted most of the rest of the movie treading water remains FAIRY TALE: A TRUE STORY's biggest mystery. Although the picture has an undeniable underlying charm, it may have you squirming in your seat as it did my son, waiting for something, anything, to happen while the fairies are waiting in the wings.
Based on an incident that happened in England around the time of the first World War, the movie tells the story of two girls, Elsie Wright (Florence Hoath) and Frances Griffiths (Elizabeth Earl), who claimed to have seen fairies in their garden. As proof, they borrow a camera and take pictures. Since only the girls have seen the fairies, the adults must rely on the photos as proof. When a disbelieving Harry Houdini (Harvey Keitel) and his believing friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O'Toole) send the photos to Kodak to look for fraud, Kodak pronounces the photos probably genuine. The show uses this and other carefully chosen ambiguity to advance the storyline.
Although all are perfectly acceptable, none of the actors stand out. The girls are cute and the adults perplexed, but their emotions run no deeper. Director Charles Sturridge has trouble staging compelling scenes when the fairies are on a break, and they spend most of the film sleeping in their trailer. When they are allowed to come out and play, they mesmerize the audience. The trouble is that they get no more than a few minutes of screen time. And the dialog when they are not on the set rarely captivates.
Michael Howells's sets and Shirley Russell's costumes recreate the era with a deft sense of the tragedy of war and of the working class environment of the region. And Michael Coulter's cinematography is warm and inviting.
The special effects of the fairies are dazzling. Small people with gossamer wings and radiant faces fly around as if in a particularly lovely dream. When they are on the screen, magic is in the air.
Peter O'Toole gives an earnest reading of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Keitel delivers a quizzical one of Harry Houdini. "Never try to fool children," admonishes Houdini. "They expect nothing and therefore see everything." Although he has some faith in children, he cannot abide adult charlatans who try to deceive people with tricks that they claim are supernatural. "Anything can be faked by anyone," he asserts, and he produces some fakes of his own to prove his point.
Occasionally Ernie Contreras's script does provide some insights as when the Elsie's father (Paul McGann) talks with their mother (Phoebe Nicholls) about their dead son. He confesses that he can no longer remember his own son's face. When he tries, the face blurs as if in a crowd among other faces.
Although the trailers have a high energy level, the film itself frequently drags. With its severely underdeveloped script, the movie is a big disappointment. The tragedy is that with more scenes like the ending one, the film could have been so special. With the paucity of good kid's movies, it is a shame that one with so much potential realized it in so few scenes.
FAIRY TALE: A TRUE STORY runs a little long at 1:39. It is rated PG for the sight of a man horribly disfigured by war and for one word of profanity. The film would be fine for kids of all ages. My son Jeffrey, age 8, thought the movie was good but was upset that the fairies were hardly in it at all. I'm not voting against any film with fairies this sweet no matter how uninvolving the rest of the story, so it's thumbs up from me and ** 1/2.
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