The Rail­way Chil­dren Return

There’s light­weight, there’s extreme­ly light­weight, and then there’s The Rail­way Chil­dren Return, an unde­mand­ing teatime frol­ic fol­low­ing the coun­try-bound mon­keyshines of a trio of knee-high evac­uees dur­ing World War Two.

As with the beloved 1970 orig­i­nal (and its var­i­ous spin-offs), the idea of the young gen­er­a­tion being post­ed out of harm’s way as Hitler’s bombs rain down on the cities is framed as a super-fun adven­ture, with bru­tal life lessons stowed away between the gig­gly larks.

Lily (Beau Gads­don), Ted (Zac Cud­by) and Pat­tie (Eden Hamil­ton) hop on a train from Man­ches­ter into a rur­al idyll. They head straight to the vil­lage hall, meet­ing the fuss­bud­get sta­tion­mas­ter (John Bradley) en route, and in a kind of speed dat­ing-like set-up they’re paired up with Sheri­dan Smith’s kind­ly school­teacher and her suf­fragette grand­moth­er, played by series lynch­pin Jen­ny Agutter.

Some mud­dy bogs and a cou­ple of food fights lat­er, and they’re bounc­ing off into the fields, and then a train yard where they hap­pen across Abe (Ken­neth Aikens), a Black teen Amer­i­can GI suf­fer­ing from a nasty injury and look­ing to defect and scarp­er at the clos­est opportunity.

Ini­tial­ly, there’s some con­flict regard­ing how best to deal with Abe, as the gang ini­tial­ly sus­pect he could be an ene­my spy. But they soon get to hear his sto­ry, and begin to realise that Hitler’s racist purges are also hap­pen­ing clos­er to home. While it’s laud­able sub­ject mat­ter that speaks more clean­ly to con­tem­po­rary mores, it does all feel a lit­tle bit laboured, and Aikens wide-eyed per­for­mance as this young stranger in a strange land is grat­ing to say the least.

There are a few pre­dictable sad twists that cut through the bois­ter­ous­ness, and Agut­ter and the ever-reli­able old hand Tom Courte­nay bol­ster pro­ceed­ings with a few expert fire­side mono­logues. But as a fea­ture, it all feels very rushed and dra­mat­i­cal­ly inert, with the out­come of Abe’s predica­ment vis­i­ble from many, many miles off.

Also, an attempt­ed emo­tion­al cli­max that sees the chil­dren emu­lat­ing their famous train-stop­ping antics from the orig­i­nal film is sad­ly ham­strung by Mor­gan Matthews’ gen­er­al­ly unin­spir­ing direction.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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