THOMAS & THE MAGIC RAILROAD
Rated G - Running Time: 1:25 - Released 7/26/00
For parents who like wholesome children's entertainment, Thomas
& The Magic Railroad, the descendant of TV's Thomas
The Tank Engine and Shining Time Station, may come
as a welcome addition to the local cineplex. For Thomas's
producers, however, the film may turn out to be a disappointment:
its mild style and lackluster performances will not be enough
to stand up against the unusual glut of kids' films released this
summer. After The Road To El
Dorado, Dinosaur, Titan A.E., Chicken
Run, The Kid, and Pokemon, Thomas
is pale competition. Still, it does provide one of the more "family
oriented" themes offered, fitting snugly into the sugary-sweet,
toddler-aimed category right between Barney and the Teletubbies.
It also contains some famous names in the cast, like Alec Baldwin
and Peter Fonda, with no one from the original TV show except
Didi Conn (a.k.a Frenchy, the beauty school dropout in Grease). However, Conn's presence is
so limited, her role is more like a featured cameo than a principal
part.
I've always thought that the whole Thomas franchise
(based on the 1940s stories by Rev. Wilbert Awdry) was little
more than a clever vehicle for writer/producer/director Britt
Allcroft to show off his love of model trains. The sets are indeed
a hobbyist's dream, with every detail you could imagine —
towns, mountains, lakes, bridges, tunnels . . . and numerous multicolored
engines, all sporting interchangeable faces (with a plethora of
different expressions) attached to their fronts. This film's story,
however, leaves a little to be desired. It takes place mainly
on the island of Sodor, where train engines live and cavort together
among little plastic accessories, probably in about G scale. It
seems that the evil Diesel has been threatening the steam engines
with his attached overhead claw (the sort of device used to pick
up trash or debris), which he calls "Pinchy." In fact,
he is responsible for the disappearance of Lady, the fabled "lost
engine" hidden somewhere in the mountain, for which he still
searches, intending to do her in for good. No explanation is made
as to why Diesel is so angry at Lady and the other steam engines;
perhaps he was unable to perform in some attempted coupling and
she told the others of his shortcomings. Anyway, he acts as the
neighborhood bully to Thomas (voice of John Bellis) and the others,
not to mention Mr. Conductor (Baldwin), the miniature guardian
of the trains.
Mr. Conductor is able to deal with Diesel until he runs out
of the magic gold dust that allows him to transport wherever he
wants to go, and he must call on his Australian beach-bum cousin
Junior (Michael Rodgers) to find him some more. Tangentially included
in this ponderous, overly complex plot is Burnett Stone (Fonda),
the sullen railman who failed to protect Lady against Diesel long
ago and can't stop beating himself up for it, and two teens (Mara
Wilson and Cody McMains), whose primary function is make kids
in the audience feel that it's not completely a story about adults.
Apart from the numerous mechanical cast members, Baldwin is
really the star here, and his approach to the role of Mr. Conductor
is decidedly wimpier and more patronizing than that of Ringo Starr
and George Carlin, who each played the role at different times
on TV (Starr was even nominated for an Emmy for his portrayal).
While Starr and Carlin both endowed Mr. Conductor with a friendly
hipness, Baldwin mainly talks down to his audience as if they
were mentally disabled. But the part is written differently, too:
on TV, Mr. Conductor is a wise, confident little man with the
answers to everyone's questions; here he is mostly a helpless
victim, lost, confused, unable to solve his problems. Maybe he's
had too much of that magic dust.
While a colorful presentation of model trains, Thomas & The Magic Railroad is a strange, brooding story vastly different from its TV ancestor, and it will soon slip indistinctly from the public consciousness and into video stores, which is where it belongs. ***