Thomas and the Magic Railroad Review

(Updated)

Thomas and Friends, a British TV series released in 1984 that centers around talking trains and their adventures on the Island of Sodor.  More specifically, the escapades of Thomas the Tank Engine as he and his friends complete various jobs around the island while learning various life lessons along the way.  While the TV show was and still is met with somewhat mixed reviews, it is still regarded in a positive light.  So much so, that eventually the creator of the show, Britt Allcroft, was tasked with making a movie based on this show.  Enter Thomas and the Magic Railroad, the first and only Thomas and Friends movie to be released in theaters.  Upon it's release in 2000, the majority of reviews towards this movie were negative with the consensus being that it didn't deliver what most children's films nowadays do.  That criticism is somewhat valid as the americanization of the film did remove some of the charm that the original series had, but does that make the film awful?  Well let's catch that next train out of the station, take a look, and find out for ourselves.

The film opens, appropriately enough, with our main character Thomas chugging down the line to work as the narrator, played by Alec Baldwin, gives a brief description about Sodor and introduces himself as Mr. Conductor.  We are then introduced to Diesel 10, who has come to Sodor in search of a "lost engine" whom he plans to destroy.  Turns out that this lost engine is not so much "lost" as "hidden" in a workshop up on Muffle Mountain under the care of Burnett Stone, played by Peter Fonda.  He gives a boy who visits him named Patch, and us by extension, a brief history between the engine, named Lady, and an "evil diesel" as Stone puts it.  We then meet Mr. Conductor himself at a railway station by the name of Shining Time and he has been given the task of looking after the engines of Sodor while their controller, Sir Topham Hatt, is on holiday with his family.  He says goodbye to his friends at Shining Time and arrives on Sodor while we are then introduced to Stone's granddaughter Lily, Mara Wilson.  She visits her Grandpa up on Muffle Mountain and then meets up with Patch, who brings her along to visit Shining Time Station.

While there, she meets up with Mr. Conductor's cousin Junior who takes her with him to the Island of Sodor via his gold dust, which is one of only two ways of getting to and from Sodor.  The other method is traveling with Lady, but this is a problem as both Mr. Conductor and Junior are close to completely running out, but they theorize that they can get more with the help of the lost engine Lady.  Once on Sodor, Thomas, Lily, and Junior meet up with Mr. Conductor at a windmill where Junior is flung from the blades and lands on top of a speeding Diesel 10.  As a safety precaution, Thomas reluctantly takes Lily through the buffers leading to the magic railroad  and back to Muffle Mountain.  While traveling, he sees a coal truck that he lost earlier and decides to take it with him to the mountain in the hope that it will help Mr. Conductor and Junior to find the source of the gold dust.  Upon arrival to the mountain, Lily leaves Thomas to find her grandpa, but Thomas ends up sliding down the mountain while she's gone and into another set of buffers.  Lily gets to her Grandpa and begs for his help, but says that he can't due to the fact that he has tried everything to get Lady working and failed.  Lily then decides to try the coal that she and Thomas brought with them and asks Patch if he can go and retrieve some, to which he excitedly agrees.

Meanwhile, Junior reunites with Mr. Conductor after being forced to use the last of his supply to escape from Diesel 10, leaving both conductors with little strength left.  Back on the mountain, Patch returns with the coal and Burnett shovels it into Lady's firebox, allowing Lady to create enough steam to get her working and onto the tracks.  The magic railroad is restored, they reunite with Thomas and the conductor cousins, and they all arrive safely back on Sodor.  But they are not out of the woods yet as Diesel 10 appears and he chases Thomas and Lady down the main line all the way to an old and unsafe viaduct which Lady and Thomas cross successfully, Thomas only just.  As opposed to diesel who falls through a gap in the bridge and falls into a passing barge of sludge.  After the ordeal, the group figures out the source and successfully creates more gold dust for Mr. Conductor and Junior.  With all said and done, the Conductor cousins go their separate ways and Lily gives the gold dust that Junior promised her earlier in the movie to Burnett.  He then decides that they should share it as he puts it onto Lily's bluebird plush toy and the movie ends with Thomas puffing home into the sunset.

And that's Thomas and the Magic Railroad, and the only lingering question is whether or not it's truly as bad as it was made out to be.  Personally, I think not as it is entertaining and it's simple enough for fans of the original show to follow along.  Even if you've had no previous exposure to the show, it can still be a worthwhile watch if you go into it with the right mindset.  It's not perfect as the americanization is somewhat apparent and despite being the title character, Thomas himself doesn't get too much screen time.  Despite that however, this movie is still well worth watching, especially when you can clearly see that it's trying to tell a good story without feeling the need to resort to any pointless CGI effects.  Two examples of films that unfortunately fall into this category are Lost in Space (1996) and Godzilla '98.  Meanwhile, the only CG used in this movie is for the magic railroad itself and the gold dust while everything else is either practical or a green screen.  It might not compare to these two and others as a sheer spectacle, but it does its job of being a simple children's film that anyone can enjoy very well.  Overall, this film gets a solid 7 out of 10 from me and with all said and done, think big, think simple, and think positive.