The Borrowers

Little in Peter Hewitt's brief career as a director -- including Bill and Ted's Bogus Adventure and Wild Palms -- could have forecast this stylishly affectionate film adaptation of the popular children's books. Here Hewitt skillfully cradles Mary Norton's robust material in an opulent, surreal urban landscape that is pleasingly a strange, but seamless concoction of industrial England and 1950s Americana.

The Borrowers are a "little people" who garner sustenance by pilfering odds and ends from their larger and unwary human hosts -- referred to as (human) "beans." Pod Clock (Jim Broadbent donning a red afro) and his Lilliputian family, uneventfully reside under the floorboards of a bean's suburban home, until a profiteering real-estate tycoon (John Goodman at his dastardly best) usurps the abode and earmarks it for demolition. Since this is a children's tale, the adults prove ineffectual at the point of crisis, so it's up to the beans' wide-eyed son, Pete (Bradley Pierce), and the Clock youngsters, Arrietty (a nubile Flora Newbigin) and Peagreen (Tom Felton), to save their families' common interest. The script by Gavin Scott and John Kamps doesn't quite capture the book's imaginatively deep texture, but the solid performances and Hewitt's craftsmanship make The Borrowers worthy of a family outing. At the Copley Place, the Fresh Pond, and the Chestnut Hill and in the suburbs.

-- Tom Meek