Danny, Champion of the World (1989)

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  February 1, 2011

  tard15r06

  Young Danny Smith has a life that could be described as idyllic - he lives with his father in a gypsy caravan behind his father's garage and he knows his way around a car engine.
  
  Unfortunately, there are two flies in the ointment in his happy lifestyle. The first is that his ... read morefather's garage is slap bang in the middle of local landowner Victor Hazell's land and Hazell wants it... by fair means or foul under the pretence of setting up a premium site for pheasant shooting.
  
  The other problem for Danny is that the school term has started and the new teacher is the strict discplinarian, Captain Lancaster, who practices corporal punishment.
  
  When Hazell ramps up his efforts to get hold of his father's garage, Danny has to come up with a plan that will stop Hazell and become the "Champion Of The World" whilst avoiding the punishments being meted out by Captain Lancaster.
  
  
  As this film is based on one of Roald Dahl's children's stories, inevitably the main lead actor is a child and Danny is portrayed in a wonderfully innocent (in a not "child actor") way by Samuel Irons, son of actor Jeremy Irons who portrays Danny's father - which makes the believability of Danny and his father's relationship more concrete.
  
  The rest of the adult cast fall into two categories that you find in a Roald Dahl novel, or an adaptation of one his films - the sympathetic adults and the villains/disciplinarian types.
  
  I'll start with the villains and disciplinarians first. Hazell is portrayed by Robbie Coltrane and along with his sidekicks, portrayed by Jimmy Nail and William Armstrong, play their roles with pantomime villainy - bluster, hot air and underhand tricks galore - and they make a worthy set of villains to both Danny and his father.
  
  Captain Lancaster is portrayed by Ronald Pickup - and as much as Hazell is a blustering villain, Lancaster is well portrayed as the other "villain" in Danny's life. There are chilling moments (well, chilling for a "Universal" rated film) when Lancaster "canes" Danny as punishment for lying and he is a brooding threat throughout the film.
  
  The sympathetic adults, apart from Danny's father are varied and portrayed the cream of classic British acting talent, including Cyril Cusack as "Doc" (which you can probably guess is the local village doctor), Lionel Jeffries as Mr Snoddy the slightly tipsy school headmaster and Jean Marsh as Miss Hunter, a local council social worker.
  
  Everything in this film - the acting, the direction, the cinematography, the set design, in fact all departments - make for a film which helps you believe that it's the "ideal" 1950's post war Britain, where English villages are quiet idylls, it's always summer, sons have innocent hi-jinks style adventures with their fathers to get one over on the local bad guy and, predictably, they are the victors.
  
  It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but this film can make for a nice diverting Sunday afternoon film - especially in this cold weather!!!

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