The Secret Garden

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I have read and re-read the book over many years and I have seen many adaptations of it. This was by far the worst I have ever seen. The whole essence of the book was completely ignored/lost. It started off not too badly, although it was set in 1947 when the original was published in 1911 - but thereafter it deteriorated both quickly and badly Odd scenes from the book were depicted - but mostly completely out of context so the viewer did not get a proper feel for what the writer of the book intended. There was no Ben Weatherstaff, Archibald Craven (Colin Firth) was at the manor all the time instead of being absent for most of it and it turned into a weird psychological Disney type movie with an ending that had (almost) nothing that was recognisable from the original story

Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel is charming. This movie is a bloated melodrama. 1. Just because you can use CGI doesn't mean you have to. 2. Who needs all the ancillary backstory(ies) that aren't in the novel, and serve no useful narrative purpose. 3. In this film, the secret garden - which is, in the novel, a secret garden - is about the size of the county of Cornwall in England, and full of all sorts of exotic plants that are not in the garden in the novel. In the novel, the children gain agency in their lives by learning to take care of the secret garden, and bring order into a place that has been abandoned and left to go wild (as, in some respects, two of the children have been left uncared-for) - this is sort of the whole point of the story. It would take an army of professional gardeners months if not years to maintain the garden in this film. Read the book, watch the earlier movie. Miss this one.

This is one of the fantastic movie during this pandemic year. I recommend y'all to watch this movie