Film:
DVD:

Written by: Blanche Hanalis, based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Directed by: Alan Grint
Starring: Gennie James, Barret Oliver, Jadrien Steele, Michael Hordern, Billie Whitelaw, and Derek Jacobi

Features:

• Production Notes
• Biographies

Released by: Artisan
Region: 1
Rating: NR; suitable for all audiences
Anamorphic: N/A; presented in original TV aspect

My Advice: Buy it

Mary Lennox (James) is leading a spoiled, perfect life in the Raj, where, as she says, the British rule like gods. But when her parents die and she is sent to live with a family friend in England, everything changes for Mary. She is truly alone--no friends, no family, no country even, as Yorkshire is very different in every way from her native India. When she finds the key to an abandoned walled garden, however, a garden with a past nearly as tragic as her own, things start to change. She finds a purpose and eventually friends--the mysterious Dickon (Oliver) who can talk to animals and make anything bloom, and the sickly heir to Misselthwaite Manor, Colin (Steele). As the garden is coaxed back to beauty, so are Mary and Colin, and even the adults Mrs. Medlock (Whitelaw) and Colin's father, Archibald Craven (Jacobi). The story in this version is quite faithful to Burnett's original, perhaps the most faithful of the handful of versions out there, with the exception of the frame story with adult Mary and Colin--an addition that surprisingly works well and continues the positive, yet pensive, tone of the book and movie.

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