Really Surprised!

A Masterpiece!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

"Goodnight, Mister Tom" is a lovely film but before you watch it, please be advised that the film has a few scenes involving child abuse that are a bit hard to watch. The film begins in 1939 with war being declared on Germany by the French and British. While his village is preparing for war, Tom Oakley (John Thaw) just seems grouchy and wanting everyone to leave him alone. However, try as he might Tom cannot avoid it and he finds a young boy deposited on his door. William (Nick Robinson) is one of thousands of children that were taken from the cities to live in the countryside in order to avoid the German Blitz. The film then becomes a nice story about the two slowly bonding...but it doesn't stop there. Where it all goes next and how does it relate to abuse, you'll have to see for yourself.This is the type of film I love, as it's all about characters and writing. No explosions, no boobs...just fine acting, a lovely story and a good use of Kleenex. Well worth seeing.

this TV film is one of those that makes you think why was it not in the cinema or why hasn't this been nominated for the big awards so many look for in a film today. Every Christmas i watch this as it is shown every year without fail and even though i have seen this film about a dozen times it never fails to grip me and make me laugh cry and smile. For those who have not seen this please do take the time to watch something that is greatly written and has amazing actors and actresses that have not had the credit that they deserve as i admire their work greatly. I promise you that you will watch this TV and think why was this not released in the cinema or why has it never received an academy award. the answer is obvious its because its not a big budget block buster. its something even special.

I have been familiar with the fantastic book of 'Goodnight Mister Tom' for absolutely ages and it was only recently when I got the chance to watch this adaption of it. I have heard lots of positive remarks about this, so I had high hopes. Once this film had finished, I was horrified.This film is not a good film at all. 'Goodnight Mister Tom' was an extremely poor adaption and practically 4.5/10 of the book was missed out. Particularly, I found that a lot of the characters and some great scenes in the book were not in this. There was not much dialogue, It was rushed and far too fast-moving, but I was mostly upset by the fact that you never got to see the bonding and love between William Beech and Tom in this film which was a true let down. The casting was not all that good,either. I thought this could have been really good, but it was so different to the book! Anextremely poor adaption, one of the worst I've seen. This deserves a decent remake that'd better be 1000 times better than this pile of garbage.

Firstly I would like say, this film was a poor adaptation of a good book. The fact is, it does not translate well to cinema. Firstly, they got Willy Beech wrong. He looks about 12 or 13 in the movie, whilst in the book he was 9. He didn't seem so innocent or so vulnerable and in fact sometimes he seemed a bit of brat. The Willy in the book was incredibly weak and timid and you actually felt tremendous pity for him, something on the contrary in the movie. Also, something you can't blame the movie for, but is still a negativity, is the short length of the movie. Everything seemed rushed, and it would jump quite happily from one event to the other, while in the book the point was to show the steady progress in Willy. They got Zach and Willy's friendship nearly non-existent (Considering they were supposed to be best of friends), and when Zach dies, you can't really understand too much why Willy would be so shocked, especially if you hadn't read the book and realize how close they were. And so much for the "Horrors of War", this movie definitely did not show any signs that the World War 2 was affecting anyone, even when Tom goes to London, he just seems to walk around happily asking where "Willy" is.But hypothetically if I ignored the comparison with the book, it would still be pretty average. Not AWFUL, but definitely not above the average and especially not worthy of an "8.1" rating. A big plus however is the acting by John Thaw (playing Tom Oakley) which is a joy to watch on screen. In a nutshell however, this is a poorly executed movie that had a lot of potential from the high standard of the novel.