Children’s
2016 / 82 minutes
RATING: 7/10

This is a wonderfully bizarre adventure: a steampunk Christian allegoric comedy adventure, with every character played by a child actor, even though the characters are adults. Our hero, Alec, is a one-armed man who gets recruited by a fully-bearded six-year-old to carry a secret message to the city’s miniature-steamboat-driving defensive forces so that they’ll be able to stop gasmask-wearing raiders.

That is a sentence I never imagined writing, but this is a movie I would have never imagined seeing. And it is both as cheezy and as fantastic. The kids deliver their lines like you’d expect children to do, and you either have to be okay with that or you won’t enjoy a moment of it. But for its preschool target audience, this won’t be a hindrance. That audience will be entranced by the set: the city of New Haven is proportioned perfectly for its pint-sized inhabitants, complete with narrow cobblestone streets, treacherous back alleys, medieval-style buildings, and canals for the miniature steamboats. It is amazing!

I can’t really think of any cautions other than this isn’t a movie for older kids, or at least the sort that roll their eyes. If an older brother or sister can enjoy things vicariously, then they’ll find it a treat to watch their little siblings hoot and holler all the way through this one. And that’ll be the fun for mom and dad too.

You can check out the trailer below and watch the film for free at RedeemTV or on Youtube here. And if you enjoyed this, you may like the producer’s earlier all-children film, The Runner from Ravenshead.