Homecoming is a staple theme of holiday specials, but unlike Pa Walton, this
unnamed Boy does not know where home is. Yet, he is determined to find it. His
journey will be more of a fable than an adventure, especially considering his ability
to talk to his animal companions in Peter Baynton’s The Boy, the Mole, the
Fox, and The Horse, produced by J.J. Abrams, which premieres tomorrow on
Apple TV+.
When
the Boy wakes up in the forest, he has no idea how he got there or where he
lives. Fortunately, he runs into the Mole, who has all kinds of helpful ideas,
like following the river to the human settlement. Initially, the Boy must
protect the Mole from the Fox, but when the little mammal frees his predator
from a hunter’s snare, he starts to trail after them, shyly. The going gets
easier once the Horse joins up with them, especially when they need a wind-break
from the storm.
Co-adapted
by Charlie Mackesy from his children’s book, The Boy etc. features some
platitude heavy-dialogue, by Tom Hollander manages to sell some of the
clunkiest, fridge-worthy banalities, with his warmly sensitive voice-over performance
as the Mole (he even sort of looks like a mole in real-life). It is sort of
like the Pooh stories at their most Taoist, pushing the envelope of New Age
schmaltz. However, the stylish animation, derived from Mackesy’s original
illustrations, is quite elegant.
Harry Palmer did not jump out of airplanes with a Union Jack parachute and a
bottle of champagne. He was a grittier, grubbier kind of spy. Not much for grandstanding
and skeptical of authority, Palmer was a workaday, working-class agent. The new
dramatization of Len Deighton’s first novel initially remembers who Palmer was,
but than it forgets it. Unfortunately, most of the updating and liberties taken
are mistakes in John Hodges adaptation of The Ipcress File, which
premieres today on AMC+.
Initially,
Harry Palmer is more like Harry Lime, managing an ambitious black-market
operation throughout divided Berlin as a mere Corporal. Next comes the brig,
but Major Dalby from an off-the-books intelligence agency offers him a furlough
in exchange for contacting a target code-named “Housemartin.” Palmer once did
business with the mercenary-smuggler. However, Housemartin has advanced to some
pretty serious business, including allegedly kidnapping Prof. Radcliffe, a
missing atomic scientist. So far, so Deighton.
Unfortunately,
things change when Palmer and fellow agent Jean Courtney are to dispatched to
the South Pacific, to observe a nuclear test that might be related to Dawson’s
research. Here the plot radically diverges from the novel and the classic
Michael Caine film. For one thing, the ultimate villain is no longer the original
villain. Instead, he is just be played by Col. Stok, who was something like Le
Carre’s “Karla” in later Harry Palmer novels. The Soviets are not really the
baddies anymore, just impish rivals. Who are the bad guys now? Us, of course—the
Americans trying to win the Cold War. How dare us.
This
isn’t a complaint based on wounded national pride. Hodge loses thread of what Ipcress
is, turning it into a half-baked JFK assassination conspiracy thriller, with
Palmer being set up as an Oswald-style patsy. We have seen far too many of
these exploitative yarns. It also diverges from the elegant simplicity and mordant
humor of the classic ending. Palmer belongs in a dark and dingy warehouse, not a
big macro-geopolitical thriller that could pass for a cross between Oliver
Stone’s JFK and Day of the Jackal.
