How sad is this?

Good concept, poorly executed.

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

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.

It was based on the children's novel of the same name. Purely a children's film. That's why I find it average. The concept was too silly. Particularly, there are a few scenes that do not make sense to the grownups. Even for hypnotism concept they used in the story. So don't accuse it if you did not enjoy it. Other than that, the direction, actors, settings, musics were nice.This is the story of orphan kids. In the rural England, no one has adopted them yet. Like orphanage kids from other films, this tale was too built with their struggles against the odds. Their caretakers are not so nice to them, especially the chief in charge. The kids too have divided and one of the gang decides to participate in a talent show. When that fails, drastically everything changes since then. In meantime a mystery book lands in one of their hands. With the help of it, an undreamt adventure begins.It should have been a television film. Not because the production quality is poor or something, but the story, how it was narrated fits perfectly for small screen. Otherwise, a series would have been a nice idea. A fictional story, and took place at the corner of the Christmas, as well as released on the same season a couple of year ago. I don't think the second film would make it. But possible as a television feature. Not worth, but watching it with kids could do justice.5/10

It's funny how this movie escaped my radar. Back a few years I was actually an AVID reader of the Molly Moon books. And this movie being made 2 years ago when I found out stunned how I had no idea of it before. And after watching it, I can see why. It was a very poor adaptation, and it seemed either the budget was low (I mean, the studios were MINUSCULE compared to the big names) or the screenwriter wasn't caring that much. It had a bit of a clunky pace and it struggled to stay on tracks. While some scenes seemed word by word from the book, with even some funny nods (like a flip of a page in Molly's notebook shows a sketch of the book's cover) while some scenes were jumbled out of place. And I really don't see why, when the movie was barely 1 hour and a half, when 2 hours could've covered the book page by page.However, the movie material was actually good. Raffey Cassidy was DELIGHTFUL. Her acting felt very natural and she was really pulling out how I imagined Molly. The other children were really natural at their scenes, when we know how hard is for children to act, the younger, the hardest. As a stand-alone movie, it felt harmless, but fun and enjoyable. As an adaptation, I felt SO MUCH disregard by the screenwriter I feel really sorry for the book and I sure wish the writer felt disapppointed, her series was marvelous and could've done much better as a cartoon.

This is aimed at kids obviously and I have not read the books this is based on. But you get a pretty good idea, what it's about (the character and everything). It's a shame it wasn't successful, because it's lighthearted fun with a terrific cast. You can tell everyone was having a blast making this.It's predictable and the characters are very easily to spot, but you don't always need complex stuff to be entertained. It's also enough to watch this with a kid (maybe not even a fan of the books) and having a blast with them. It's overall effort is more than decent and if you allow yourself to dive into this world (just don't look too long into her eyes), then you'll be entertained

A lovely family film highlighted by a wonderfully magical performance by Emily Watson. As usual, Watson lights up the screen in every scene in which she appears and the power of her talent irradiates the entire film. There is no doubt she is the most gifted actor of our time and her career is marked by one magnificent performance after another. Even in featured or supporting roles, she somehow manages to dominate the screen and make even an average motion picture something very, very special. This film is certainly a fitting showcase for her stunning work and hopefully what she does here will be well noted and remembered at Oscar time. She is quite overdue for an Academy Award and it is a scandal that she was not bestowed one by now for the inspired performances for which she's been nominated.