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It’s always a shame when ageism creeps into the movies. A theater is a place where people should be able to come for entertainment, not to dodge the crossfire of feuding generations. But you see it all the time. One weekend the box office is dominated by a tasteless teen comedy, the next by a waterlogged Harrison Ford-Michelle Pfeiffer thriller. That’s three generations right there.
Even worse, such skirmishes have broken out even between subspecies of children’s movies. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the kidflick releases from the past two weeks. Pokemon The Movie 2000 was obviously inspired by, and would probably be more watchable with the aid of, the latest products of America’s healthy cottage industry in recreational pharmaceuticals. I’m surprised theaters showing that high-octane, 200-beats-per-minute Japanese import aren’t hawking Ecstasy, Special K, GBH, and Euphoria instead of Milk Duds, Twizzlers, Sweet Tarts, and Raisinets. Now this week comes Easy Rider’s dope dealing Captain America, Peter Fonda, starring in something that was obviously intended to cater to the more Aquarian, granola-oriented, marijuana-and-hashish crowd from the 1960s, Thomas and the Magic Railroad.
Think I’m joking? You’re probably familiar with the PBS-imported BBC children’s show “Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends,” featuring Ringo Starr as a lilliputian railroad conductor, and it’s Americanized version, “Shining Time Station,” with Emmy-nominated George Carlin as the diminutive ticket-puncher. Harmless fun, right? Well, that’s what the Victorians said about Lewis Carroll too, and hardly anybody figured that one out until the Jefferson Airplane came along and sang “Go Ask Alice.” Consider the following, and see if it doesn’t sound to you like it came straight from the pen of William Burroughs:
Mr. Conductor (here played by Alec Baldwin, who speaks in the most intelligible, nearly normal voice he’s been heard to use since puberty) is a foot-high sprite addicted to this golden dust called “sparkle,” which, when administered via a toot on his magic whistle, allows him to travel back and forth between the real-world town of Shining Time, where apparently the only people who can see him are those who by lengthy proximity have accumulated a contact high, and his home universe on the magical Island of Sobor, where he’s normal-sized and converses with pastel-colored anthropomorphic steam locomotives who can roll their eyes but can’t move their mouths unless the camera isn’t looking – kind of Mr. Bill meets Clutch Cargo.
When an evil diesel train tries to destroy the steamers by seeking a mythical lost engine, Mr. Conductor enlists outside help from Burnett Stone (Fonda) and his granddaughter Lily (Mara Wilson). But he’s having trouble navigating between worlds because he’s used up all his sparkle, so he calls on an equally tiny nephew who must have had some rail experience himself since he appears to have stepped fresh out of the cast of Trainspotting, toting as he is a thick British accent and an ample supply of dust. With judicious application of enchanted coal that induces rainbow-hued hallucinations, even in the trains, somehow the worlds are kept safe from diesel despotism.
See what I mean? Do you really want your offspring watching this? Why don’t we just give out opium along with milk and tacos for lunch in elementary school cafeterias?
Despite the thinly veiled drug references and a plot so full of exposition that children will probably be the only ones who can understand it, Thomas and the Magic Railroad -- Thomas is the littlest, pluckiest steam locomotive, by the way – is much more bearable than Pokemon. Even adults may find it fun, in an HO-scale way, if they’ve ever enjoyed watching model trains navigate a hobby-shop landscape of little plastic trees and plaster-of-paris hillsides. But it’s still spooky when out in the theater lobby you find, instead of the usual box where you fill out an entry form to win an introductory membership to Gold’s Gym or a Disneyworld weekend, discount coupons for 28 days in rehab. C-
*Posthumous apologies to Jerry Garcia for screwing with the lyrics to “Casey Jones,” but we run a family-oriented publication here.
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