Review of The Boxcar Children (2014) by Timothy S — 31 Jan 2015

Very sweet (sometimes almost overly so), long overdue adaptation of one of my favorite books from my childhood.

I'll never forget my fourth grade teacher reading the first Boxcar Children book to our class. I'm kind of surprised it has taken so long for a film version to surface, seeing as how the story has been beloved for generations.

The film itself has plenty of flaws, particularly in the animation department; the characters look like they were taken out of an old Sims video game. The backgrounds are nicely rendered, but the entire film looks painfully artificial. Some of the dialogue is rather stilted, as well; some of it just doesn't translate well from page to screen.

Still, the story is a classic, and this adaptation is very true to the source material. The target audience is clearly young children, and it pleases me to think that a new group of kids might discover the book(s) because of this movie. I'm delighted that sweet, innocent tales such as this still have an audience!

As in the book, the children are polite and supportive of one another, and there is much to learn within. The actors doing the children's voices do a pretty decent job, all things considered. J.K. Simmons and Martin Sheen are welcome additions, and add some credibility to the grown-up voice cast.

I'm quite sure that a lot of my positive feelings come from the special place in my heart for the book, and objectively, it shows its seams as a low-budget effort, but hey, I watched it for "free" on Netflix. There are many worse ways to spend an hour and twenty minutes, and I'd certainly recommend it for families with young children- at least for the children themselves.