Review Detail

I watched the original film exactly once, and was so disgusted with the castle raid and all the Suspian that I refused to watch it again, preferring the BBC version (which actually respected the book's content). But I took a chance on this edit fixing a lot of that, and I was relieved to see it removed both of the elements I detested most.

I had to dock a star from the audio/video quality because of the unfinished CGI scene - but at the same time that really isn't Sobo's fault, and it is a good scene to have! Also, the song-only ending was lovely but it was very noticeable that the children were speaking to each other on the train - and we couldn't hear what they were saying - so it was slightly jarring.

I docked a star from the narrative mostly because there were the occasional oddity/holdout such as Nikabrik's disappearance, and the bits of Suspian in the form of some longing looks. Overall I felt those elements were more or less handled as best as they could given chopping out whole scenes such as the White Witch one that would've explained where Nikabrik went. I don't remember that scene well enough to know if it were possible to retain much of it while still cutting the worst parts, so I won't suggest that the editor should have done that, though if it were, that might've been a better option.

On the whole I felt that this was a major improvement on the original film, and highly recommend it for any book fan who (like me) was disgusted at Disney's attempt to turn this book into film. The minor issues listed above are just that - minor - and don't significantly detract from the overall enjoyment.