XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.

Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

kidboots After watching the "E. Nesbit" episode from "The Edwardians" I realised why her books ("The Railway Children", "The Enchanted Castle" etc) have become classics enjoyed by children and adults alike - it is because she truly loved children and could put herself into their world. Enid Blyton as portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter was a harpy - a person who could write formularized children's books that appealed to only the young but had no empathy with her own!!I watched this as a couple of friends had recommended it and was completely absorbed in the whole strange story of Enid Blyton's life - and Helena Bonham Carter can take full credit for this. I think the signs were there from the start, having a father who is the apple of your eye desert you, then trying unsuccessfully to escape from a mother, who from the couple of scenes she had, was not going to sugar coat life - here was a girl who wanted to escape reality.From the film she didn't seem to struggle for recognition with her writing, once she started she married her publisher who then began to drink heavily when he realised she was completely self absorbed and only thought of herself and her "little friends" - he and the kids could go to Hell!! One of her children, Imogen Pollock wrote a book about what having Enid Blyton for a mother was really like, called "A Childhood at Green Hedges" and I am sure the film must have borrowed heavily from this. The film opens with an explosive Enid answering a charge from the B.B.C. that her books are not her own but as the film unfolds it's clear that she has written every single word, she doesn't have time for anything else, she certainly wouldn't win "Mother of the Year"!! Enid is so full of love and gratitude to her fans, her "little friends", but as exasperated Hugh says "if they knew you they wouldn't like you" - she takes them on outings, invites them to parties where they can eat as much red jelly as they like but up at the top of the shadowy stairs it seems like the only children not having any treats are her own!! Worse is to come when Hugh goes to war, Enid takes up with Kenneth Walker (Denis Lawson) and he returns to find Enid about to divorce him. He shoulders all the blame for the privilege of seeing his daughters whenever he likes but with the divorce finalised, Enid reneges on her promise and also is the means of him never being able to work in publishing again!! Her new husband is just as happy to shield her from life's brutal facts. One scene where the father comes home on leave and the little girls are eager to show him their rabbits - ""There were two but Mummy and Uncle Ken ate one". Another is when Enid puts a little Noddy doll in pride of place on a table and moves her family photos to the very back and in the most telling (for me) Enid, as a new mother, just staring and staring at her little baby screaming, not having the least inclination to pick her up or soothe her, wanting desperately to get back to the books for her little friends.Life can't always be put on hold and when her brother Carey reappears in her life (she had told everybody that her family had died) to tell her that her mother had just died and why had she forsaken them, plus a few shocking truths about her beloved father, Enid suffers a complete breakdown which may have led to the dementia that killed her.Pretty gripping stuff if you only know Enid Blyton as the author of Noddy, The Magic Faraway Tree, The Secret Seven and the Famous Five!!!

icelandica This film promulgates the stories spread about that Enid Blyton was a horrible person and a cold mother. This is not factual. If you read Barbara Stoney's very accurate biography - "Enid Blyton, The Biography" with a foreword written by Miss Blyton's own daughter Gillian - you will see that she adored her children and loved both her first and second husbands. She contributed enormous amounts of teaching aids to the teachers and children of the twentieth century, and should be remembered with love and admiration. Do not take this cinematic telling of her life as factual. It isn't. In her daughter's own words - "I was very close to my mother, and talked with her freely from early childhood." which disputes the notion of her having been a cold mother. I have read her biography, and whilst this film captures the atmosphere of the time, it does not capture the true events.

dbdumonteil Everybody has read at least one of Blyton's books ;it brings back good memories.In "Enid" ,Helena Bonham- Carter portrays a malicious cold calculating writer ,incredibly selfish.when her books are lessons in moral (although a bit obsolete nowadays) ,she's only interested in the others ' children,and only because they admire her ;her own daughters do not get any love or affection (that's what the younger daughter wrote ,the other had reportedly another opinion).She seems still in love with her father who nevertheless left the family when her siblings were young;Ken ,her second husband ,is an older ,mature man;she despises Hugh ,the first one,and she ruins his life .When WW2 breaks ,she acts as though she does not care ,still living in the Famous Five world ,on their private island ;but when business is at stake,she 's no longer a child,but a ruthless person,even a woman ahead of her time: that may be the key to the George /Georgina character to whom being a girl was a disgrace.Bonham-Carter's excellent as ever and her performance is terrifying.

ctomvelu1 I'm not sure why anyone would want to watch this extremely unpleasant British drama, but so be it. British actress Helena B.C., who often takes on offbeat roles, plays a children's author named Enid Blyton. Blyton suffers from bipolar disorder, likely brought on by a miserable childhood in which her mother drove away her father. Blyton initially plans to be a teacher but finds she has a knack for writing about her favorite childhood fantasies, which clearly were meant to transport her out of her sad childhood. She marries her publisher, whom she eventually drives away, repeating the sins of her mother, and marries a much older man, clearly a father figure. For a children's author, she isn't much on children In fact, she can't stand her own children and eventually drives them away as well. When she finds herself preggers by her second husband, she finds a way to get rid of that child as well. Eventually, she lapses into full blown dementia and is reported to have died in the late 1960s. I thought at first she was a fictional character, but apparently there was a real Enid Blyton, who apparently was all the rage in Britain at one time. She apparently never caught on in the U.S. like her contemporaries, Enid Bagnold and Beatrix Potter. It may be that her writing was not up to theirs or that it didn't translate well with the American audience. As a writer with three daughters, I have spent countless hour in libraries and bookstores and never once come across her name. By the way, the real Enid Blyton was horse-faced, which makes me wonder why the filmmakers chose the somewhat attractive B.C. to play her. Nicely photographed and produced, but horribly unpleasant. Unless you like them that way, stay away. B.C. is of course marvelous as the mentally disturbed Blyton. She literally sinks her teeth into the role.