Tom's Midnight Garden
Tags: flashback

Plot synopsis:
When Tom Long's brother Peter gets measles he is sent to stay with his Uncle Alan and Aunt Gwen in a flat with no garden. An elderly and reclusive landlady, Mrs Bartholomew, lives upstairs. Because he may be infectious he is not allowed out to play, and feels lonely. Without exercise he is less sleepy at night and when he hears the communal grandfather clock strangely strike 13, he investigates and finds the small back yard is now a large sunlit garden. Here he meets another lonely child called Hatty, who seems to be the only one who can see him. They have adventures which he gradually realises are taking place in the 19th century. Each night when Tom visits, Hatty is slightly older and Tom begins to wonder about the nature of time and reality. In an attempt to discover what's going on Tom asks Hattie to leave her skates in a hidden place. When he goes back into the future he manages to find them. One night Hatty and Tom go out skating however Hatty begins to fall in love with a boy from her own time named Barty and Tom finds he is invisible to her. The next night Tom is unable to find the garden, running into rubbish bins from the modern day instead. Just before Tom returns home he meets Mrs Bartholomew, who is revealed to be an elderly Hatty.

Review: Grabbed Me and Wouldn't Let Go. I'd never heard of this movie before today, and had no intention of watching it.
Oh look, I thought, another dry British film.
Next thing I knew, I had my coat off, it was 2 hours later, and the film was over.
Of course, I may be biased -- I have a thing for "time travel" stories of any kind, and this one was so subtle that I found it especially intriguing.
A beautiful film, subtle and thought-provoking.
Unlike many films of this nature, this film does not spend ages character building before launching into the story.
The pre-story is short, with the film being plot driven.
The characters are not explored in depth, instead it is the relationship between Tom and Hatty that is the focus.That is not to say that you do not feel for the characters, the empathy is there.
Like the best films, not everything is explained, and it is for you to discover it for yourself, leaving you with the desire to say your discovery to the characters.
Slowly you become drawn into Tom's world.The settings are beautiful, the characters are generally well acted, and the ending, whilst obvious, is still wonderful.
Warning: may lead to tears !I would, without question, recommend this film.
The type of movie that the English excel at making.
If you like well done stories such as the Secret Garden this will appeal to you.
The actresses playing Hatty are appealing and the settings and production values are outstanding.
While primarily a children's film, this production will appeal to all ages.
.. I first came across this story when I was a 12 year old watching it on my primary school television.
I sat down and watched it from beginning to end tonight and I was completely captivated by the whole movie.
It was one of those movies that you simply did not want to end.
A previous reviewer said it was a film that the often criticised British Film Industry is so good at making.
Saw it last year on cable and tried to watch it every time it showed up.
Cast is perfect but it's the English gardens that steal this movie.
I read the book a few years back and was surprised they made a movie out of it.
The movie follows very close to the book and is a heartwarming tale.There is a little more character development in the book but the movie is a very good adaption..
This is one of our favorite films and we were thrilled when we found the region 2 DVD for it.
My husband talked about this film for years, since we saw it while in college.
Even our three year old son was interested in the beauty of "Garden" as he called it.
This is definitely one of our favorites.One of the funniest characters, though a small role, is the estate's gardener.
He's the same actor who plays Filch in the Harry Potter films.
Except for one scene where the little brother appears, which probably makes sense in the book, everything flowed wonderfully in this film.
This film is great.I watched it in school because we were reading the book.
Tom Long's brother Peter Long has measles so Tom has to stay with his aunt Gwenn Kitson and uncle Alan Kitson.Tom's aunt and uncle live in a very strange house.A couple of days later Tom makes a new friend, Hatty and they play together.Tom is actually invisible so it makes them playing even better.Hatty is growing up very quickly when Tom is just a kid until Hatty becomes a real women.Tom is telling this true story of when he was young (12 years old).
In school we had a trip which was going to see Tom's midnight garden at a theatre and it was fabulous.I got a better understanding when I watched the film because it was great..
"Blooming Heck" lisps hapless lead Anthony Way halfway through this flat, poorly acted, poorly directed mess of a film.
This film has no fans?Things get off to a bad start the moment (former choirboy, you've been warned...) Way first comes loping and blinking into focus.
Based on the book, I'd sort of envisioned the titular Tom as a likable, down to earth sort of boy that most kids could vaguely identify with.
As opposed to an awkward, gurning,public school irritant with zero charisma and a terrible hair cut.Titular indeed.Because make no mistake, whatever qualities this film possesses (some nice photography and...er), this is car-crash cinema, utterly depth-charged by a central performance so staggeringly poor you'll be agreeing with Elvis (and 78% of all Americans, apparently) that shooting your TV screen with a high-calibre handgun is a a Good Thing.
There are scenes in this film where poor Anthony can barely get his words out in the right order, let alone with any semblance of believability.
Its as if the director (I use the term loosely)just thought "Sod it, I can't be bothered to re-shoot this idiot, he's not going to get any better..."But the cross-fade addicted "director" doesn't help himself by fumbling key moments and allowing ham-fisted editing into his final cut.
Witness the moment when young Tom comes in from the garden and, blank-faced as ever, drops out of view as the picture quickly fades to black.
So folks, here's a film centering on two kids and neither of them can act in any way shape or form that convinces.
Ahh the "score"...You know that saying that the best incidental film music is the unobtrusive variety you don't notice?
But it still rings true when you have to endure the by-numbers, twee, jingle-jangle hack job of a score that curses this movie's entire running time, without let-up.
This is officially the worst film music of all time, no question, and I've sat through a number of Hans Zimmer/Michael Bay collaborations so I knows da territory folks.My son is 9 years old and isn't a cynical culture assassin like his Dad; he enjoyed the book and wanted to see this film to see how it came over on screen.
On this occasion I'll let him off - after all, I've always impressed upon him the importance of telling the truth.Still, the garden's got hedges shaped like squirrels.2/10 (for the topiary).
TOM'S MIDNIGHT GARDEN, the late '90s adaptation of a classic children's novel of the 1950s written by Philippa Pearce, is a passable slice of entertainment that has both good and bad elements to recommend it.
While it's entertaining enough as the story progresses, I couldn't help being disappointed in its failure to capture the magical qualities of the written story, which make it one of my favourite children's books of all time.One of the problems is writer/director Willard Carroll's Americanisation of the material.
Thus we get the ridiculous scene of Tom opening and closing the door and watching the furniture change over and over again, which is as redundant as it is silly.
Less effects and tighter storytelling would have been the obvious choice here.Still, the film looks the part, and the design of the titular garden is particularly strong.
The young actress who plays Hattie gives the best performance in the whole thing, while Prince William-lookalike Anthony Way is adequate as Tom. There's a good eye for the supporting cast, which includes nice, if minor, roles for David Bradley and Liz Smith and an alluring turn from Greta Scacchi.Sadly I did find that the story started to lose me as it progressed, and the last third is noticeably weaker than the preceding two.
It happens when Hattie starts to grow up; scenes which should be poignant and heartbreaking are anything but, and I think that's a problem both with Way's acting and the deficiencies of the script.
The added, present-day wraparound material (which wasn't in the book) is also unnecessary and distracting.For me, the definitive version of the story is the BBC miniseries of 1989, which haunted and spellbound me as a child in equal measure.
Good film.
Being British & of an age; I'd previous seen the two BBC versions of the book (1974 & 1989).
This film scores over those in it's production values and is a faithful retelling of the story (which works well on screen).
However I found two things rather let it down the biggest being the age of the actor playing Tom. Tom is meant to be a young boy of 8 or 10 but here he is played by a 17 year old, and though he does it well, it really doesn't work in places; especially losing the effect of Hetty growing up and leaving him behind.
The second thing, I didn't like was the music, which I found very intrusive and annoying in places.
That said, it's a good film.
I live near Chenies Manor & the garden look beautiful in this.
And have a good laugh at 1970's Tom's hair-style !.
I was entranced by this book as a child, so I was hoping for the best from this film.
I wish I was able to say that my hopes were fulfilled.Let's start with the good things.
This film looks very good and, visually at least, belies its low budget.
One of the things that digital effects have achieved is to enable inexpensively-made films to look as if they cost more to make than they actually did.
The sets and outdoor shots are fine, except for one or two scenes where the (hilly) Isle of Man where the film was shot doesn't completely impersonate the (flat) countryside around Ely where the story is set.So far, so good.
It tops and tails the original story with an irritating 'present day' sequence featuring a grown-up Tom.
I suppose the writers could find no other way to accommodate a story that is firmly fixed in the 1950s, but these scenes still grate.Next, there is some fearfully clunky dialogue.
Many of the adult actors manage to handle the stuff they have to speak pretty well, but this is unfortunately not true of Anthony Way who plays Tom, and whose acting is little better than the sort of thing you can see in any school play.
He was 16-17 when the film was made, so he also looks much too old for the part.
Some scenes are simply embarrassing.If you can ignore this poor performance there is much to enjoy here.
I first 'met' this story watching the program Merry Go Round in school - it included a black and white serialised version which so enchanted me I immediately sought out the book to read.I then watched the TV series in the 70s and loved that also.I had high hopes of the new film - hopes which were dashed.
The set up before Tom met Hattie seemed to last forever and Tom was so OLD.
He was a little boy in the books - but in this film he is a lumbering teenager.I agree with other reviewers that the lad playing Tom does not come across as believable.I managed to stay awake for the first third of the film and then nodded off.
When I woke up five minutes later I switched the film off.
My husband looked at me and said, "Thank you - I couldn't have stood much more of that." The music is obtrusive and naff.
The best actor in the film is the garden..
It is surprising that the makers of this film thought it was good enough to show on the big screen.
It is like they have scraped away to get to the basic material that makes up Tom`s Midnight Garden and then just strung it together.
The cast was terrible,the performances wooden,and some of the storylines different from the book.
The script is also a problem.It comes in chunks so like you will have a chunk and then none at all and then a chunk and so on.
People who like the book will find it a let down.
And now we have got a version of Carries War in 2005.I really like the book,so I hope it is of better quality than this awful and shallow film..
Pretty Good.
This movie had a beautiful plot and inspired a lot of my writing and art.
Unfortunately, after watching the movie, I felt a little unfulfilled.
Like one of the user comments said, time wasn't spent developing the characters.
It's great that they got into the story quickly, but I don't feel they spent enough time setting the mood.
I expected this to be a cross between Alice in Wonderland and The Secret Garden because of the description and the setting, so I was really disappointed when I saw that there were very few characters, and the ones that existed were boring.
I grew a bit more excited when he met Hattie because I thought that a meaningful relationship twist might develop, but all that happened could be described as a slight crush.
All in all, though I was extremely satisfied with this movie- until I saw Hattie as an old lady.
It was disturbing because the whole movie had slightly implied a love for Hattie from Tom, and then she's this old, matronly woman!
Also, when Tom saw the tree being cracked by lightning and heard the gasp, the sound effects were horrible, and the timing didn't make any sense.
It was a very fun film, and I enjoyed watching it.
I have absolutely no knowledge of author Phillipa Pearce or any of her novels and if TOM`S MIDNIGHT GARDEN is typical of her work I probably would have had little interest in her books as a child .
When I was a child I wasn`t really interested in litreture unless it had soldiers fighting monsters complete with a high body count Judging by this film version of TOM`S MIDNIGHT GARDEN I guess Pearce writes for lower middle class kids since much of the story of revolves around protagonist Tom Long moving to a house with no garden then suddenly finding a metaphysical one .
There`s also a romance involving a young girl called Hattie but again are cynical kids amoured by love stories ?
Perhaps the worst criticism is that very little in the way of excitement or adventure happens within the narrative This is a childrens film that seems dated by its source .
I wonder how many of them would have given it so many high marks if they were 10 year olds who`d just seen the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy ?.
Don't believe all of the bad reviews - I liked it.
I was fully expecting to hate this film as I usually hate film adaptations of books I have liked (viz.
Yes, there were things that could have been done better but I thought all told, they did a pretty good job.
Of course the scenery was beautiful (which seems to have really appealed to some of the reviewers on this site) but I don't think that was the only thing this adaptation had to offer.
It stuck pretty closely to the original story (much more than most film adaptations of books) and I don't think it is fair to criticize it for not developing the characters very much - as I remember the book (and it was a very long time ago that I read it so I might be wrong), the characters aren't developed very deeply in that either, and for a very good reason - the story is about a friendship between two people, which for one of them lasts about a month (I guess) and for the other lasts a a whole childhood but spread very thinly.
Their meetings are very brief and the two main characters never know very much about each other, until the very end, and so I think if the film had tried to develop their characters any more, this site would have been full of reviewers (possibly including me) howling about them ruining the story by making it what it isn't.
As for the other characters (the Aunt and Uncle, Hattie's Aunt and cousins, the gardener), they aren't developed very much in the book either (I did like the gardener and as I remember the book he was the only other person in Hattie's world who could see her, so they got that right).
I don't think there is any 'love story' (as one harsh critic states) between Hattie and Tom, either in the book or in this version, just a very deep friendship.
I think Tom could have been cast a bit better (slightly younger) but I think he is supposed to be an awkward, gawky teenager, probably slightly young for his age anyway.
I thought the other casting was excellent, especially the two Hatties.
I don't agree with the critic who thought the present-day beginning and end spoiled it, and I definitely don't agree with the reviewer (who I don't think had read the book) that the meeting with Mrs Bartholomew at the end spoiled it.
That bit was very well done I think and possibly improved on the book.
Maybe I liked it because I didn't really like the book all that much when I read it as a child - I thought it was nothing compared to "A Traveller in Time" (I think the working class hero of a couple of reviewers ago might like A Traveller in Time a lot more - the narrator comes from a much more ordinary background if I remember correctly.) I do hope no-one decides to make a film version of that (unless they employ me as a script adviser of course)(of course there was a brilliant TV version (BBC I think) when I was a kid).
The main thing that spoiled it for me was the fact that Future TV (the Lebanese channel I saw it on) don't pause the films when they have an advert break.