Goodnight Mister Tom

Gun violence, sex, special effects, and overpaid movie stars are the order of the day in current cinema, and the fact that Goodnight Mister Tom—a Masterpiece Theatre production that first aired on public television in 1998—has exactly none of those things makes it all the more appealing. The story, based on a novel by Michelle Magorian, centers on "Mister Tom" Oakley (a fine, measured performance by the late John Thaw), a widower in a small English village, who is still grieving over the untimely death of his wife and son decades earlier. Tom is your basic misanthrope—at least until England declares war on Germany in 1939, at which point he and various other villagers are obliged to temporarily take in children who were evacuated from London when Hitler's Luftwaffe began bombing the city. Put in Tom's charge is nine-year-old Willie Beech (Nick Robinson), a sweet but damaged boy with a mother from hell and the scars, physical and psychological, to prove it. It's no bulletin that the two help each other deal with and overcome their troubled pasts, but the predictability of the story is tempered by its unhurried pace and utter lack of sentimentality, even in its ultimate message (basically, "all you need is love"). Although there is some dark stuff happening here—child abuse and infanticide, not to mention the general horrors of war, which the filmmakers neither dwell on nor ignore—this still qualifies as the kind of family entertainment all too lacking in Hollywood. Recommended. (S. Graham)