Review: Mio in the Land of Faraway

Young Swedish orphan Bosse (played by Brit actor Nicholas Pickard) is taken away from his miserable Aunt and Uncle and transported to the land of Faraway. There he learns that he’s actually the son of Faraway’s noble king (the dull but presumably affordable Timothy Bottoms), and that he’s really a prince named Mio. The main plot has Mio and his reliable child companion Jum-Jum (Christian Bale) on a quest that eventually leads them to battle the evil, child-hating knight Kato (Christopher Lee). Susannah York briefly turns up as a seamstress in Faraway called The Weaver Woman.

 

Largely forgotten 1987 fantasy adventure for children desperately wants to be another “NeverEnding Story” with a little “Lord of the Rings” thrown in for good measure. A Swedish-Norwegian-Russian co-production with an international cast, it’s an extremely expensive disappointment. Based on a children’s book by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren (of Pippi Longstocking fame), it suffers from abysmally lethargic direction by Vladimir Grammatikov (“A Little Princess”), who just isn’t up to the task of helming what should’ve been an exciting children’s fantasy adventure flick. He’s no Peter Jackson, George Lucas, or even Ron Howard (director of the enjoyable but hardly brilliant “Willow”), and it really does make you realise that this type of film needs a strong filmmaker and a good cast. It’s mostly a plodding bore, with main actor Nicholas Pickard similarly not equipped for his position. He lacks necessary energy and enthusiasm for the part. In fact, he’s constantly upstaged by a young Christian Bale, who shows all the charm and charisma in the world at this early stage of his career. You don’t really see the bright future in him, but nonetheless he’s definitely the more interesting of the two kids.

 

On the surface of it, this would’ve been right up my alley as a kid, but in execution I doubt if I would’ve liked it anymore back in 1987 than I do now. It starts out OK, though I was getting more British vibes than Swedish, with Roald Dahl (a less mean-spirited Dahl perhaps) and JK Rowling springing to mind in the first act. It’s all very sweet and charming, and there’s also a little Terry Gilliam with this kid travelling to Faraway on a big floating head with a long white beard. The locales are really nice and the production design is too, but the animated FX work is a bit weak even for 1987. Derek Meddings (“Live and Let Die”, “Superman”, “Batman”) was involved in the FX and model work, so that’s a little surprising and disappointing though some of the models at least look interesting if obviously fake. The music score by Anders Eljas the one-and-only Benny Andersson (one-quarter of ABBA) is as good as you’d expect from the latter. He and fellow ABBA member Bjorn Ulvaeus also composed the film’s theme song. However, for the most part all this film really did was make me want to read the novel, which surely has to be vastly superior to this plodding, enervated treatment. As adapted by producer William Aldridge (a Brit who worked mostly translating and script doctoring on Swedish, Danish, and Russian films) it’s all very flat and talky, and lacking in action. For a film this expensive to make (about 50 Million kronor, apparently), you wonder why the emphasis is so heavily on talk, rather than adventure. After about 30 minutes worth of ‘I know’ and ‘Everyone knows that’ the film was really getting on my nerves. I wanted to like it, but it just wasn’t to be, not like this. 50+ minutes without our main villain doesn’t help, either. Late arriving as he is, the great Christopher Lee is suitably black-hearted and cruel to children. Although he gives his final scene all he’s got, there’s just not enough screen time afforded to him to make it really matter. He needed to be a presence much earlier and more frequently. The whole film feels underdone and short, while moving at a snail’s pace. What should’ve been rousing fantasy entertainment for the younger set might send them to the land of nod instead.

 

A real mixed bag, it does have a thing or two going for it so that it’s not a complete disaster. However, it needed a stronger director and a more exciting script. Overall it probably rates just below ‘acceptable for kids’, which makes it a bit useless really. It’s no surprise that the film is relatively obscure outside of perhaps Sweden where it was quite a big hit at the time.

 

Rating: C