Postman Pat: The Movie

I took my three year old granddaughter to see this film but it had nothing like the appeal to her of her earlier visit to "Frozen".

As a familiar character from television and books, Postman Pat (voiced by TV actor Stephen Mangan but with Ronan Keating as the singing voice) has an immediate attraction for young children and the cartoon has plenty of colour, action and songs, although it looks more like a television production than a big screen affair.

However, the storyline's weak double satire - of management efficiency measures in a postal operation called Special Delivery Service and of an overpowering game show host named Simon Cowbell - are better understood by parents than children, so neither age group was terribly enthused.

I saw this movie with my 4 year old, his first real movie experience, and a disappointing one. At home he loves the postman pat short movies so he was excited to go and see this one. Now he is an always happy kind of guy and sat through the movie. But the excitement was quickly gone I noticed.

Simply too much references to adult-world kind of things like ... got talent, work problems, etc etc that are outside his world. It simply lasted too long.

At the end he was more interested in the different flavors popcorn then the movie. Too bad, missed opportunity

Nice (London Olympics style) intro, passable opening theme version but then horrors of horrors.....those voices...terrible. Sounds as if all the main characters have been ingesting helium. Did the Producers really buy into the franchise at all or were they just out to make a quick buck with celebrity voices and a poor tie in to a talent show. Anyone brought up on the original t.v. series will shake their heads at this very poor film. Ever watched Shaun the Sheep? that's the way to do a feature film- true to the original with MINIMUM changes. I hope this never crosses my path again and warn anyone thinking of watching this film to expect very little of the original- for that is what you will get.

I'll admit, for the first half-hour, I really didn't see what was so bad about this film. The first little while felt like an episode of the series and even the talent show story line at least made sense as Pat was doing it for his wife and not for himself, and Pat's always been selfless so that was great. I was already a little sceptical when they revealed the whole Robot Pat thing, but when it escalated into a bigger plot, this was where the movie almost lost me. I was able to accept the existence of cellphones and a PS Vita, of all things, in the world of Postman Pat, but the evil robot thing really shouldn't be connected to this.

And before you say anything, yes, I know movies connected to cartoon shows usually try to differentiate themselves from their source material. And honestly, I think the talent show plot was good enough. You could have had the fame and attention get to Pat's head only for him to learn a lesson in the end and that would have been fine. As if that's not enough, we also get a terminator reference and, yeah, is this really Postman Pat?

However, in spite of all of this, I found this strangely enjoyable, but more as its own stand-alone sort of thing. Like Tom and Jerry the movie, I don't really like this as something connected to its respective series but rather its own entity. Every time the movie did something to make me groan, like when the villain revealed his evil plan before it was too late for Pat to stop him and, probably the most painful of all, Jess not being able to tell the difference between his beloved owner and a robot, it managed to pull me back with either a decent joke or something equally entertaining.

All-in-all, I can see why a lot of Pat fans don't like this movie. After the first half-hour, it starts to lose a lot of its charm in favour for something I'd accept in any other animated film, but I still found it strangely entertaining. I can't recommend it, really, but it's a guilty pleasure for me.

Postman Pat was always a family favourite which we still all have a fondness for. Despite being warned very strongly against going to see this film and despite the trailer looking unappetising, I still saw it anyway. It was always going to be a film that would go either way, the amount of talent on board, my general love for family films and for Postman Pat could have suggested that the film would be fun and charming, but there was the worry also that it would look as muddled, target-audience-confused and hasty-looking as the trailer suggested. The film has its moments and it is not from personal opinion quite as bad as heard, but it was a big disappointment. The film begins very promisingly with a very idyllic opening that was the closest the film ever got in resembling the show, the Big Time song is a great upbeat song that has some very funny visual gags, the montage where Pat meets his wife for the first time was very touching and the "Faster Pussy-Bot, Kill Kill!" seemed like a Daleks reference and it was if the case a clever one at that. The soundtrack is catchy and bring energy to the film and the voice cast are good and very enthusiastic, David Tennant sounds like he's having a whale of a time but Steven Mangan, who's very sympathetic and dead-on as Pat, and Jim Broadbent acquit themselves very well too.

Sadly, Postman Pat: The Movie is let down by that it didn't seem to know what to do with itself or know who to aim the film at. The story is rather over-complicated and confused focusing mainly on the talent show subplot and also including a Dr Who-like robot invasion/world domination one, neither of which show any originality, cleverness or charm. The satire for the former is nowhere near sharp enough, the humour actually felt to me rather forced mostly throughout the film and borders on vulgar while the latter felt thrown in and like it belonged in another film altogether, is not all that cleverly or thrillingly done and may contain bits that the younger audience may find scary or upsetting. The script would have benefited from a far more simpler approach and less going on and while it is admirable that the film did clearly think of the adult audience I think it could have done a better job at having more for the youngsters. Some of the jokes will go over their heads, unless they were introduced to Dr Who at a very young age, and if they are familiar with the whimsy and warmth that the show had the film sadly is a far cry from that. The characters are bland, the exceptions being Pat who is very likable and possibly Jess as well but the others lacked personality. The film was unevenly paced with some of the earlier parts in need of more zip and some of the later parts in need of a slow-down, most apparent in a climax that was action-packed but too busy and dark compared to the rest of the film. The soundtrack is one of the best things about Postman Pat: The Movie and Ronan Keating does a great job as Pat's singing voice but it is a case of the singing voice not matching the speaking voice especially in the tone. Just as disappointing as the writing was the animation, the opening was really promising but the rest looked like it was made in a lot of haste and had some very over-saturated and too bright colours, the characters also lack expression and on occasions look creepy, Pat is the one exception. Overall, a disappointing feature film debut of a much cherished classic character, not an awful film and has some good assets but it felt over-stuffed, muddled and bland with some cheap direct-to-video-like visuals with the opening being the only time where it bared any resemblance to the show. 4/10 Bethany Cox