Cider with Rosie

source: Cider with Rosie

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SOME SPOILERS I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn't recently listened to the BBC radio version or read the book. I understand that books and films are very different media but this is a very adaptation indeed and wastes some very useful actors. I recall watching a exterior version, possibly a BBC serial as a teenager. It was very sanitised; the menace of the boys lurking in the woods planning to attack a girl in the earlier version has become a banal incident of adolescent confusion. The children's ages were all wrong, some siblings no longer existed, while another, who'd died before they came to the village, was miraculously resurrected only to be killed off again. The constant jumping back and forth in time was badly done and confusing too.

The performance of Samantha Morton was excellent. When I saw the cast I didn't realise that it was just the voice of Timothy Spall that appears in the film. I really like Timothy Spall, but I'm not a great fan of narration in movies. I think the actors that played the children both younger and older did very well and I really liked the battling grannies who were begrudgingly fond of each other. I did not really like the jumping back and forth in time. A little of that kind of thing is okay, but there was too much of it here. The scenery is lovely and it is overall a gentle tale with some sad and sinister moments.