REVIEW:
An unavoidable clash with a vital Warriors rugby league match saw reviewing duties for this full-length reimagining of the children’s classic deputed to a 4-year-old and his 68-year-old grandmother.
Pat has already endured one modernisation – the more recent television offerings have seen him become a victim of the internet age, delivering eBay parcels instead of letters – but here the threat is to his very livelihood as an evil consultant plans to replace Pat with a troupe of robotic replacements.
When Pat (Green Wing’s Stephen Mangan does the spoken word, boy-band burbler Ronan Keating the songs) is denied his well-deserved holiday he sets out to win one instead by triumphing in one of those interminable Simon Cowell talent quest things.
Grandma thought it was above average, because the plot actually hung together, didn’t patronise the kids or try to be too ironic, but still retained intelligence. However, she thought the 5-8 crowd would prefer it to the pre-schoolers. The 4-year-old considered: “It was really funny. It was better than the TV because it was so long. The robot was really bad. The robot cat was amazing – its teeth were so big it could probably eat your ear off your head. But I didn’t feel good at the end, I started crying, because it gave me a headache.”
Fun though it would be to attribute the headache to Keating’s chirrups, we cannot in good faith attribute a subsequent Starship visit for flu on Pat or even the evil management consultant (though they can usually be blamed for most things).
POSTMAN PAT: THE MOVIE (G) 87 mins
