Swallows and Amazons

1974

Action / Adventure / Family

6
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 76% · 500 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.4/10 10 1139 1.1K

Please enable your VPN when downloading torrents

If you torrent without a VPN, your ISP can see that you're torrenting and may throttle your connection and get fined by legal action!

Get Expert VPN

Plot summary

On holiday with their mother in the Lake District in 1929 four children are allowed to sail over to the nearby island in their boat Swallow and set up camp for a few days. They soon realise this has been the territory of two other girls who sail the Amazon, and the scene is set for serious rivalry.


Uploaded by: OTTO
August 18, 2014 at 12:51 PM

Director

Top cast

Suzanna Hamilton as Susan Walker - Swallow
Virginia McKenna as Mrs. Walker
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
754.98 MB
1280*720
English 2.0
NR
24.000 fps
1 hr 32 min
Seeds 1
1.44 GB
1920*1080
English 2.0
NR
24.000 fps
1 hr 32 min
Seeds 1

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Prismark10 4 / 10

Bland adaptation of a children's book

Set in 1929, the four Walker children go with their mother for a holiday in the Lake District of England.

They sail a dinghy called named Swallow and form a rivalry with the Blackett girls who have a dinghy named Amazon.

The Walker children camp on a small island in the lake where they engage in a pirate adventure with the Blacketts.

The Blacketts' Uncle Jim accuses the Walker's of stealing his chest although one of them noticed some strange men hanging about.

This is a slight children's tale which now looks listless, nothing much exciting happens. Ronald Fraser's Uncle Jim is just all wrong in his characterisation. It looks like Arthur Ransome's book was gutted in the adaptation.

Reviewed by TheLittleSongbird 7 / 10

Yet another family favourite -flawed but charming.

Swallows and Amazons is a very pleasant film, it is nowhere near perfect, but it is very enjoyable. The film does look absolutely beautiful, with lovely views of the Lake District. What the film does lack is a narrative, it is a lovely story, based on Arthur Ransome's superior book, but personally I would have liked more narrative entwined into the story. Consequently, because the film wasn't to be that, despite some undeniably charming scenes, the film is a little shallow. What also let the film down was some of the casting. I had no problem with Virginia McKenna as the mother, she was lovely, and most of the children were very well done, especially Titty and Susan(a very young Susanna Hamilton). The two exceptions to this rule is Roger and Nancy, Roger being too gormless for my liking, and Nancy perhaps too old. Ronald Fraser as Uncle Jim was another problem. I liked his scene at the end with the children, when he plays the accordion, but on the whole he did overact, so I found it difficult to relate to his character. On a positive note, there are some really charming scenes with the children, like any scene on the water. Also the music score was lovely, and was careful not to overshadow the action. I had no problem with the script either, and on the whole the story made the film as charming as it actually is, despite its flaws, but there could have been more narrative. Overall, I really liked it, certainly not the best family film, but one worth looking out for. 7/10 Bethany Cox.

Reviewed by Jonathon Dabell 5 / 10

Inconsequential kids film from a popular classic book.

Arthur Ransome's much loved children's' book is brought to the screen in this faithful, albeit rather inconsequential, film from Claude Whatham. The book is a gentle tale about vacationing children in 1920s Lake District who make camp on an island in the lake beside their holiday home, and spend the entire summer getting in and out of adventures along the water. The biggest drawback in the book is the lack of real conflict among the characters. Everyone gets along absurdly well, Coral Island-style, and the book cries out for some fire and spice to stir things up a bit. However, Ransome overcomes this problem with his engaging writing style and his loving attention to local detail. The same cannot be said of the film which, stripped of Ransome's evocative prose, ends up being merely pleasant and genteel for its entire duration. Not that it's unwatchable or anything, and there are definitely sufficient points of interest to warrant a look.

Four young children – John (Simon West), Susan (Suzanna Hamilton), Titty (Sophie Neville) and Roger (Stephen Grendon) – arrive in the Lake District with their mother (Virginia McKenna) for a summer break. Their father, a sea captain, is away on a voyage at the other side of the world. Their holiday home is right beside a long lake and the children immediately find their attention drawn to a large uninhabited island in the middle. They are allowed to use a small wooden sailing boat, the Swallow, to explore the lake and the island, and soon they come up with the idea of setting up a camp on the island. Two other girls, Peggy (Lesley Bennett) and Nancy (Kit Seymour) – a.k.a The Amazons – arrive on the scene and challenge the Swallows to a test of courage and cunning to decide the true masters of the lake.

Swallows And Amazons, like any family film peopled by kiddie characters, relies on its child cast to hold things together. In this case, most of the children are rather wooden and struggle to create convincing characters. Grendon as Roger is particularly weak and turns one of the best characters from the book into an irritating buffoon, while Seymour is far too old and far too girly for the part of Nancy. There's not enough help from the adults either, with Ronald Fraser embarrassing himself quite dreadfully as Captain Flint. On a positive note, the film manages to capture the spirit of adventure and exploration rather nicely, and is a treat to look at throughout. Individual scenes work quite well, such as the bit with the charcoal burners, and the night-time sortie in which the Swallows attempt to steal the Amazons' boat. Overall, this is a fair-to-middling adaptation of the book – a nice, undemanding 92 minutes if you're in the right frame of mind.

Read more IMDb reviews

1 Comment

Be the first to leave a comment