Here is the thing about The Magic Faraway Tree that nobody is really leading with: this movie was written by Simon Farnaby, the same guy who co-wrote Paddington 2. That should tell you everything. Paddington 2 is one of the warmest, funniest, most quietly devastating family films of the last decade, and Farnaby has basically been handed an entire enchanted forest to work with this time. The bar he set for himself is genuinely intimidating.
The film is based on Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree novels, a beloved British children's series that started publishing in the early 1940s. Farnaby and director Ben Gregor have moved the whole thing into the present day, following a family forced to leave the city after mum Polly quits her job as an engineer when she finds out her company secretly added hidden cameras to the smart fridge she designed. It's a small detail but it does a lot of work. The film's whole thesis is right there: screens are watching you, go outside and climb a tree.
Andrew Garfield plays the dad, Tim, and Claire Foy plays Polly, and this is their first time sharing the screen since 2017's Breathe. That reunion alone would be enough to sell the movie to anyone who saw them together in that one. The chemistry they built back then clearly never went anywhere, and Garfield has said the dynamic between them came back completely naturally. This is also his first proper family film, which feels weirdly overdue for someone this likable.
The supporting cast is almost unfair. Nicola Coughlan plays Silky, Nonso Anozie is Moonface, Jessica Gunning is Dame Washalot, and Rebecca Ferguson clearly had the time of her life playing the villain Dame Snap. Then there is the small matter of Judi Dench playing a sentient fridge. Not a metaphor. An actual fridge. Director Ben Gregor has said that once Garfield signed on, legends just kept gravitating to the project, and the Judi Dench fridge thing is somehow the most logical endpoint of that domino effect.
The movie already opened in the UK back in March and has done well enough that two sequels are already in development. US audiences are getting it on August 21, which means you still have time to do your homework. Go watch Paddington 2 this weekend if you somehow haven't, and maybe Breathe if you want to see what Garfield and Foy look like when they're operating in completely different territory. Then go see this one. It sounds like exactly the kind of movie that makes you feel better about everything for a couple of hours, and honestly that is more than enough right now.
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