IZZARD IS A LIZARD

REVIEWED - FIVE CHILDREN AND IT: Had not the solidly traditional adventures of a certain young wizard become the publishing sensation of the decade, one might have felt confident in predicting failure for this latest adaptation of E. Nesbit's Edwardian tale of secret passageways, eccentric uncles and jolly supernatural beings.

But the default milieu for children's fiction - steam-trains, ink-wells, knickerbockers - still seems as popular as ever, and if the little blighters do turn against Five Children and It they will not do so because it is too old-fashioned.

Like Ms Nesbit's better-known The Railway Children, the film, which takes place a decade later than its source novel, follows the adventures of a family of children cast into a strange place without the love of a father. The five miserable tykes are sent to stay with a mad Uncle and a madder Aunt (Kenneth Branagh and Zoë Wanamaker) while their aviator father fights for King and Country in the Great War.

Investigating a forbidden room, they come across a passage which leads to a beach where a short, ugly, indifferently animated gargoyle awaits.

This beast, who grants wishes to those who believe, is voiced by Eddie Izzard and, had the film-makers allowed him the sort of licence granted the frightful Robin Williams in Disney's Aladdin, we might have had a much more entertaining movie on our hands. As it stands, Eddie has only a few brief moments to shine while the juvenile cast gets up to any number of spiffing pranks and ripping japes. Sadly, it all feels a bit thrown together and, were it not for an excellent performance by tiny Freddie Highmore and a final one by the soon-to-retire Norman Wisdom, the picture would have only quaintness to recommend it.