the audience applauded

Fresh and Exciting

Admirable film.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Another charming adventure from the Children's Film Foundation. This time a gang of kids is out to foil the plans of a sinister oil 'baron' and his goons, who they discover have kidnapped Prof. Picton PhD, the slick-haired inventor of an ingenious and much prized oil-detector device. The baron himself is of the old school, with his cut glass accent and manor house bedecked with suits of armour and oak panelled walls hiding secret doors - just the place for good old fashioned skullduggery!Like other films from the Foundation this a ripping yarn told well, with great performances from the child leads. It's not a tale with much emotional power-unlike for example 'Johnny on the Run', another CFF film made 3 years prior-but it skips along at a jaunty pace with the kids getting into all sorts of amusing scrapes and taking every opportunity to tussle with the baddies. All in all a slight and enjoyable tale of kids (hooray!) defeating the baddies (boo!), with only a little help from the mostly dithering adults. Special mention too for Geoffrey Wright's playful score which adds much to the gentle silliness of this warm hearted film.