The Portable Door

What fun. An enchanting film. An adult fairy tale and boy meets girl rolled up into one.

Paul's very bad day leads to an unlikely job opening at the prestigious, mysterious company, J Wells. He quickly becomes a favorite of the boss, but no one else on the hiring committee has anything good to say about him. As he proves his metal to both his new coworker and the company at large, we are taking on a fantastic journey. Imaginative sets help create magical scenes.

Christopher Walt makes a great bad guy. The cast includes Sam Neill, who always delivers. I'm sure the primary actors are up and comers, but I'm just not familiar with them from earlier movies.

Enjoy!

I haven't read the book so I can't judge this movie on that basis. It's a nice looking film with nice photography, there's no problem with editing or pacing. Its what you'd expect from this type of film. The cast was suitably solid but for me the highlight was Sam Neill: His was a stand-out performance, an absolute delight. He just stole every scene he was in and was loads of fun. However, the movie would have been better if not for serious problems with the sound mix. The music is so overwhelmingly loud it drowns out the dialogue to the point where you're struggling to discern what is being said over the sheer loudness of the music. You might as well turn subtitles on. How does such a serious blunder occur? It seriously detracts from what otherwise might have been a more enjoyable movie.

I love a good sci fi and fantasy film, so I decided to give this a try. I'm glad I did, because it wasn't bad, but it wasn't anything like I expected.

The British tend to like their buffoonery, and there was simply too much of it in the beginning. Sam Neill could never be described as cute but that's what they were trying to make him be.

The story was also difficult to follow. The Humphries had me completely baffled until very close to the end.

Considering Jim Henson was involved with this I thought the goblins were very poorly done. Also some of the sets were great but some of the characters not very well defined at all.

Overall I didn't hate it and I watched it from start to finish in one go. But it was very slow to start and just wasn't polished enough to understand, so by the end I only just realised what I had watched.

Why do people who have read the book ever bother to view a film they know from the outset they will hate because - insert whiny voice- "it's not like the book". Why not save yourself the agony.

As a counterpoint I have read the book, and thought this adaptation was most enjoyable. You can't really describe anything without spoilers. Ut it bowls along with a great sense of humour -mfor some of which paying attention is rewarded.

If you haven't read the books give them a go as there are seven in the series and explore the idea in greater details. This will be good should get round to making a sequel.

Paul Carpenter's day goes from a morning of disasters, with his toaster exploding and a random lecturer professing to know him, to a bizarre interview at JW Wells and Co, a somewhat unusual organisation.

This was one of those films that I was made to sit down and watch with the while family, an array of ages, the feedback was generally positive, personally I rather enjoyed it, despite it not really being my preferred genre.

I was told to expect something along the lines of Harry Potter or Extraordinary Beasts, in truth I could see no similarity at all, other than them being fantasy movies, family friendly fantasy that is.

Not especially exciting or particularly well paced, but oddly engaging and baffling, this film is so strange and weird, it just draws you in. You'll be scratching your head several times as you try to work out what's going on, just accept that it's slightly bonkers, and I think you'll enjoy it.

To summarise, it's very quirky, family fun, it's well acted and oddly engaging.

7/10.