Fairy Tale - A True Story
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Movie Reviews of Fairy Tale - A True Story
Movie Review: YOU WILL BELIEVE!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Two young girls who believe that fairies are real attempt to prove it to the world in this drama based on actual events. In 1917, there is little to be happy about in the Wright household in West Yorkshire, England. Polly (Phoebe Nicholls) and her 12-year-old daughter Elsie (Florence Hoath) are still grieving over the death of Elsie's younger brother, and Polly's niece Frances (Elizabeth Earl) has come to stay with them after her father was declared missing in action during World War I. Polly longs for some sort of proof that there is a life beyond our own, while the two girls ardently believe in fairies and enthusiastically study legend and lore. One day, Elsie and Frances produce photographs of fairies that they claim were playing in their garden; Polly believes that they are real, and soon the snapshots attract international attention. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O'Toole), author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries and a confirmed spiritualist, declares the photos "as genuine as the King's beard," while illusionist Harry Houdini (Harvey Keitel), who has devoted much time and energy to exposing phony mediums and psychics, takes a more cynical view, though he too is eventually convinced that the fairies are real. While Fairy Tale: A True Story presents the appearance of the fairies as fact, analysis of the photographs proved them to be fakes (especially after the same fairies were discovered as illustrations in a children's book published before the photos were taken). The real-life Elsie Wright admitted late in life that the fairy photos were a hoax performed as a "little joke" and that she was always surprised that so many people believed .
This is yet another of the many beautiful sentimental movies and is one you will really enjoy!
Movie Review: Important and delightful
Summary: 5 Stars
A charming tale of magic and mystery, "FairyTale - A True Story" is based on the remarkable reaction that swept WWI England, after two young girls took photos of the fairies living at the bottom of their garden. Their family, like so many in wartime, is mourning the loss of their son, and they are far from alone in wishing for proof that death is not the end. Electricity and photography are new sciences, and "Spiritualistic" fraud abounds. When Arthur Conan Doyle investigates and sanctions the authenticity of the story, the country accepts it as genuine. Like all good fairy tales, the movie has a message that underlies the fantasy elements; the human race frequently finds itself in need of reasons to believe in the ability to transcend pain and death. As Polly Wright, the mother and aunt of the girls, confides in her husband, she is afraid to believe that the pictures are real, and afraid not to.
The cast of Fairy Tale was well chosen, from luminaries such as Peter O'Toole as Doyle, to newcomers Florence Hoath and Elizabeth Earl as the budding photographers. Not a single performance is poor or overdone. Beautifully filmed in soft colors, with appealing special effects, it evokes life in rural England nearly century ago. The original music adds to the ambience, and the blending of reality and illusion is seamless. Recommended for all but the most jaded of viewers. Relax and enjoy.
Movie Review: One of my favorite movies of all time
Summary: 5 Stars
I've recently started to go through my video tapes and picking my favorites to get on DVD. Fairy Tale - A true story is one of only a handful that I've decided to repurchase. It is such a wonderful tale of innocence and wonder and hope. I never get tired of watching it. Even though the main story is about the events of the Cottingley Fairies and the two young girls who capture faeries in photographs, most of the drama is occurring in the adults surrounding this event. This movie is such a wonderful balance of the perspective of the girls and the hope and joy these photographs brought to the adults in the movie. On the surface it looks like a kids movie, and even though many kids do love it, it is much more than that. It's as much a faerie tale as it is about how we all grow up and stop believing in those things we cannot see and touch. But when we are little we have imaginary friends, and tea parties with dolls, and play with faeries in the back garden. This tale is about the deep hope many of us have that maybe those childhood fancies, that seemed so real when we 'didn't know better' may have actually been a lot more than we can rationally accept as adults. That is why this tale is so amazing. It isn't about little children believing in faeries, its about Sir Arther Conan Doyle, and publishers, and Kodak, and the world faced with the possibility that faeries might actually be real.Movie Review: Faeries, I BELIEVE!!
Summary: 5 Stars
recently I saw an episode of the British "Antiques Roadshow"--low and behold, one of these little girls' grand-daughters appeared WITH THE ORIGINAL PHOTOS of the faeries!! My wife and I actually hollered because it was a connexion with the fact that this is a true story.
For those of you who somehow could not possibly know, this tells the story of two naughty little girls who alleged they saw faeries in their back garden. When they were doubted, they produced photos that they themselves took. It was a tale that shook the world.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O'Toole) did indeed get involved, and believed the girls. Harry Houdini (Harvey Keitel)...I'm not so sure, but Keitel gives a charming performance, and it all lends a kind of I-was-there feeling to this terrific film.
One thing I hated was the intrusive reporter (Hugh Bonneville) who encounters the ghost of one of the girls' brother. That was too much and unnecessary to a magical, richly produced film. But do not miss a young Bill Nighy as an incredibly funny, enthusiastic Theosophically-minded believer.
You must own this!
Movie Review: Pleasant, But Its Not "A True Story"
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a very lovely and appealing retelling of the story of the Cottingley Fairies, a famous case of the paramormal which began when two young girls claimed to have taken pictures of fairies near their beck or creek in the town of Cottingley, in Yorkshire. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became interested in the case, and for a few years the Fairies caused quite a sensation. In the 1980s the two young girls, by now elderly women, confessed that they had made the whole thing up using paper cut outs for the fairies.
This film has some very beautiful scenes of the English countryside and depicts the storyline romantically and somewhat exagerratedly, but does a good job of linking the desire to believe in fairies to the stress so many people were under during World War I. Who wouldn't want to believe in another, fantastical and beautiful world when all the news in your own is bad? I enjoyed the film and I'll watch it again for the beautiful scenery and the enchantment of the story (the fairies are extremely well done), but I'll also have to remember that the reality is considerably more prosaic.