The House With A Clock In Its Walls: are children's films underrated by critics?

By Leah Martindale, Third Year Film

When we review the latest movies, are we biased against films for younger audiences because we have a different criteria for viewing experience?

I love magic. Ever since I was a little girl, I have wanted to live in the shadowy worlds that permeated the magical, fantasy films I grew up watching. I read Terry Pratchett and Lemony Snicket, and - though I discovered it later than most - the wizarding world of Harry Potter. I vowed to spend my life looking for the Gomez to my Morticia and searching for Spiderwick’s impossible creatures.

I also still love children’s cinema. Our mindsets are formed by the songs, shapes, and colours we absorbed through our doe eyes and the stories we whispered from the mouths of babes. When I went to see The House With A Clock In Its Walls, I was Augustus Gloop leaning into the chocolate river, and, much like our rotund Germanic friend, I came out disappointed.

The story is one of perfect wonder, with a magical, jolly uncle, Jonathan Barnavelt (Jack Black), and a neighbour, Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett), with all the elegance and mystery of a panther – a purple one, of course. The young hero, Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro), gets to learn magic, experiences a powerful lesson in friendship, and defeat the most powerful warlock in existence, all in just under two hours and a pair of Amelia Earhart goggles.

In fact, it’s a little too perfect. His trials and tribulations feel insignificant, and his whole trauma is wrapped up neatly in a silken, Tyrian bow. Within the first fifteen minutes, everything is revealed. The film is high quality and the plot is wholly enjoyable, there’s no denying that, but it is a shallow victory when everything seems conveniently handed on a ticking platter. I started to question whether I was even enjoying the film, despite the cackles and gasps that implied so.

In terms of performance, there’s been better. As child actors go, Owen Vaccaro is no Freddie Highmore, and Jack Black’s attempt at being ominous and aloof is heavy-handed. Even Blanchett, equidistant from motherly and austere, comes across as unsubtle. It played on classic, dark fantasy - borderline horror - tropes: the seemingly evil biological mother, the spooky baby dolls, the risen dead and the unstoppable, paranormal foe. I could enjoy it analytically, and I could enjoy it emotionally, but overall, there is something lacking.

Then I became critical of my own criticisms. It has all the elements I used to love: a Nanny McPhee-esque, loving but mysterious, magical woman, a BFG style lovable orphan taken in by a strange man with a big head and a bigger heart. So why didn’t I love it as much?

Sure enough it came to me as Florence’s magical umbrella exploded an army of evil jack-o’-lanterns. The simple reason that this film did not light a tiny, telekinetically controllable fire in my belly is because I am no longer 12.

As I watched Jonathan’s animated topiary gryffon fart a pile of dead leaves onto tiny Lewis, the realisation that this film was not meant to appeal to me left me sad. Will I never be able to love a children’s film in quite the same way now that their fishnet plot-holes have let the light in and blinded me? Will I rewatch my childhood favourites and find myself more Horace than the Five Children And It (2004)?

If I am destined to take my tiny doses of magic from adult features like The Shape of Water (2017) then so be it because as I left the cinema, uplifted by the joyous plot but deflated by the predictability of it all, I heard a small boy ask his mother if he could learn to be a warlock too. Maybe that is a better review than anything I could write. Maybe the silly laughs I shared, bolstered by the whoops and chuckles of the target audience, are a sign that the film is doing something right.

I’m sad that adulthood had to hit me as it did – in a house with an unstoppable clock and a shape-shifting, stained-glass window – but I am so pleased that another generation gets to search their garden for the stars in the pond, and dream of playing the saxophone at night. I must say, I think that is the best review I could give.

Featured Image: Youtube / Universal Pictures

Have you found you struggle to fall for the magic of children's films now you're all grown up?

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