Film Review: The Magic Faraway Tree

The Magic Faraway Tree
Director: Ben Gregor
Palisades Park Pictures
In Theaters: 08.21.2026

There’s very little that I enjoy more than a good family film, and I’ve always had an affinity for whimsical fantasy. As such, the only thing stopping me from calling The Magic Faraway Tree my favorite film of the year so far is that I’ve seen it.

When Polly Thompson (Claire Foy, First Man, Women Talking) quits her job after her design for an AI refrigerator is usedunethically, her unemployed husband, Tim (Andrew Garfield, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Tick, Tick… Boom!), suggests that it’s time for a major change. The Thompsons buy a small house in the English countryside, where they intend to start a new life with their three children: irritable teenager Beth (Delilah Bennett-Cardy), screen addict Joe (Phoenix Laroche) and the withdrawn Fan (Billie Gadson), who doesn’t seem to talk anymore. The family struggles to adjust to life without modern conveniences, and the children put up a fight, especially Beth. But everything changes when Fran discovers a magical tree inhabited by eccentric characters including Moonface (Nonso Anozie, Cinderella, Sweet Tooth) and Silky (Nicola Coughlan, Derry Girls, Bridgerton). There’s also a ladder that leads to the treetop, where the children can be transported to different fantastical lands. As the siblings embark on increasingly perilous adventures, they rediscover their imaginations and grow closer as a family. When one child’s careless wish threatens their parents’ new life and future together, the siblings must return to the Faraway Tree and journey through its magical worlds to set things right.

The by-the-numbers storytelling started to lose me the moment it introduced one of my least favorite stock plot devices: the child who won’t talk. And there isn’t even the requisite traumatic event behind it, which gets to the heart of the problem with The Magic Faraway Tree: it’s little more than a mishmash of underdeveloped ideas. When it’s focused on the family relationship, the movie is corny but quite sweet, elevated by an appealing cast, but it stumbles around and never gains a footing as a fantasy story, because it’s more childish than childlike and not nearly as magical as the title suggests. There are scattered strong moments, from a sequence where each of the children gets a wish fulfilled to the siblings coming together to save the family by singing a silly song that Tim wrote for the family. Whenever one of these charming highlights came along, I found myself thinking “it’s finally starting to click” and that “the best was yet to come,” only to have everything lead up to a farting contest. Perhaps my expectations were too high considering that the screenplay comes from Simon Farnaby, who co-wrote Paddington 2 and Wonka, but television director Ben Gregor never creates the sense of wonder and awe that makes a children’s fantasy fly.

Foy is one of my favorite actors, and she’s wonderful in every scene she’s in, though there aren’t nearly enough of them. Garfield’s enthusiastic portrayal of a goofball father who wants nothing more than a simple life with a happy and loving family is quite endearing and occasionally a tiny bit annoying. The children are giving it everything they’ve got, and Coughlin is quite adorable as Silky. Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, The Greatest Showman) is wasted in an extended cameo as the villainous headmistress Dame Snap, who runs a strict school in one of the magic lands.

The Magic Faraway Tree isn’t a terrible film, it’s just a disappointing one that doesn’t live to its grand potential. It’s entirely possible that audiences with lower expectations and a greater fondness for flatulence humor than I have might find it does the job for them. If it were a simple weekly series about a family struggling to adjust to life in the country, I’d be looking forward to the next episode. It’s just frustratingly unfortunate that when the family climbs to the top of the titular tree, it doesn’t have the strength to support them. —Patrick Gibbs

Read more film reviews by Patrick Gibbs:
Film Review: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
Film Review: The Rivals of Amziah King

If you enjoy keeping up with SLUG’s reviews of new films, consider joining our community of donors!