Finding Miracles

Soppy Canadian films about growing up in the 1930s really shouldn't be allowed to be this good.

In fact Looking for Miracles is a very middle-rank sort of touchy-feely part-Disney family feature (and yes, that's the same Disney we have the half-witted Abbot of Worth sneering about in today's Telegraph - H/T: Thompson). But I was pleasantly surprised, nay hugely relieved, given that I'd bought the DVD from an Amazon subsidiary for a couple of quid and it had been sitting on my shelf unwatched for months, like a standing reproof to those who buckle to the charms of one-click ordering.

It could have been immensely dull, or, worse still, hugely preachy. In fact it's neither. Certainly it isn't preachy. Authority figures in it do, ultimately, maintain their authority, but they also get a good-natured, Harry Potter-style run around from the ambitious, scheming young ruffians they've taken on as leaders at their incredibly dangerous summer camp. There also lashings of violence (including corporal punishment - if "lashings" is quite the right word) and all sorts of dangerous things that were legal in the 1930s and 1989 (when the film was made) but that almost certainly not survived the Clinton-Blair years. (How many modern Canadian children would even fit in a canoe, one pondered at one point?)

The trailer is below. And here's The Simpsons' take on such things - not to mention the Addams Family's. (Happy Thanksgiving!)