the audience applauded

A Disappointing Continuation

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

'The Magic Roundabout' is a cute and fun family-flick. What really makes it so enjoyable are the lovable characters brilliantly 'played' by the voice artists that include numerous British talents (such as Bill Nighy, Sir Ian Mckellan, Ray Winstone and Joanna Lumley) and Australian beauty Kylie Minogue (what a beautiful voice!). Robbie Williams as Dougal is a little too whiny at times. The various vivacious characters include a gentle-snail, a shaggy dog, a singing cow, a guitarist rabbit, a small train and a half-spring character who are all on a quest in search of three diamonds to rescue the land from freezing over. The plot may not be seen as anything new and the CGI may not be of Pixar animation quality but that didn't hinder my liking for the film. I found it to be very adventurous and there were several funny and endearing moments. I also liked the creative use of different colours and the soundtrack is brilliant. My memory of the classic (from which the film was inspired) remains very blur. Hence, I cannot comment on how true it stayed to the original but as a film itself, it's good family entertainment.

When I went to see this movie (the first time) I wasn't expecting to be all that impressed. I'm a wee bit too young to remember a lot of the Magic Roundabout from the seventies, but I did recall it was a bit lacking in the plot department. That hasn't really changed much.However, the jokes are laugh-out-loud funny, the characters lovable (especially Dylan...See if you can keep a straight face when he catapults Brian into the air), and the soundtrack can get you jiving in your seat should the mood take you. (Note Dylan and Ermintrude's version of "You Really Got Me"...Class!) Okay, so maybe it's not the old stop-motion cartoon of yesteryear, and maybe the cast has had a makeover and a bunch of big names taking over their voices, but there is a lot to enjoy about this film. If you go with young kids, be ready for the funny looks when you're giggling away at the jokes that go right over their heads.

When I was a kid (in the 1960s) the Magic Roundabout was a charming 5-minute puppet show. Zebedee came on at the end and said "Boing! Time for Bed". And we did. This 2005 movie is a bombastic CGI spectacle that contains many of the same characters (sort of), a weak script, average jokes, and a plot that manages to be predictable as well as incoherent.It is a measure of how tired this is that the character of Zebedee is very much like that of Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings films -- and that he's played by the selfsame Ian McKellen. The starry cast does what it can with a weak and cliché'd script -- Joanna Lumley as posh cow Ermintrude, Jim Broadbent as the charmingly fogeyish snail, Brian, with top honors going to Bill Nighy as stoner Dylan the Rabbit (using what sounded like out-takes from his role in Love Actually.) Kylie Minogue (there as a draw for the tweenagers) is passable as Florence, and Robbie Williams (ditto) is a surprisingly good Dougal the dog.OK, it wasn't helped by the fact that the family behind us kicked our chairs and rustled their candies all the way through, but I give it 1/10. So why mark it as 5/10? Well, my kids (aged 6 and 4) loved it -- but they'd never seen the original. Are children these days so inured to spectacle that they can't watch a film without extreme fantasy landscapes, fx and explosions? Then again, how do you expand a 5-minute kids' programme into a feature? It has been done before, of course -- 'Dougal and the Blue Cat' was pretty weird, too. But this doesn't really make the grade.

All is quiet, it's teatime and before you know it Zebedee says those immortal words: "Time for bed children." But 'Boing'… Suddenly, as if by magic… Kylie Minogue is telling you that they're "coming to get ya" – a talking sugar addict dog, an opera singing cow, a stoned bunny and a wacky wizard with a spring instead of legs, man I think I've been eating too much sugar myself… It's true though – just when you thought it was safe to take a trip back 30 years to a place of innocence and fun – here comes the super slick all singing, all dancing, all action CGI Magic Roundabout. Yes, some brave filmmakers have taken on the daunting task of updating the British teatime favourite (originally from France) which was once the 2nd most popular show on the BBC – behind the news!! How on earth could this work? And who invited the lovely Kylie to not only voice Florence but also knock out a catchy Magic Roundabout single for the soundtrack? A genius team of Dave Borthwic, Jean Duval and Frank Passingham actually – and they've pulled off a minor miracle here. Aided by the superb voice cast of Tom Baker (Zeebadee), Jim Broadbent (Brian the snail), Lee Evans (Train), Joanna Lumley (Ermintrude), Ian McKellen (Zebedee), Bill Nighy (Dylan) and Robbie Williams (Dougal). And there's even a plot of sorts: the Magic Roundabout lies in ruin after an evil ice sorcerer Zebadee has escaped to freeze the world. Step up some unlikely heroes, Brian, Ermintrude, Dylan and Dougal to challenge the chill by recovering three magic diamonds. Okay, so the plot might as well have been from a computer game and it is all a bit far removed from the genteel original but it's just mad to see Dougal and crew trekking over fiery volcanoes, jungle temples and snow-capped mountains. Plus McKellen manages to instill the spirit of Gandalf into Zebedee and even gets a heroic 'fall from a high pass' scene after battling his icy nemesis Zeebadee. This leads to Dylan almost quoting Pulp Fiction with "Zeb's dead babe, Zeb's dead"; this and some of the original's trippy substance references will keep adults of a certain age smiling. What can I say? I was amazed at how much I enjoyed this slight bit of nonsense, maybe it was sheer nostalgia but then my son Luke loved it too which I wasn't expecting.