The film’s pleasures are simple – soaring landscapes, old-school DIY adventure and some sweet performances by the child actors. It makes for a charmingly old-fashioned family adventure.
It’s heartening to see Ransome’s fiction taking on a new and more independent form, suggesting an ongoing relevance for a series of books that could easily be viewed as too dated for modern children. As the kids put it: Swallows and Amazons forever.
For a film industry determined to open itself to a diversity of voices, this is very much a safe, back-to-basics play for British audiences in need of some reliable comfort food.