Product Details

• Actors: Alec Baldwin, Cody McMains, Russell Means, Peter Fonda, Jared Wall
• Directors: Britt Allcroft
• Writers: Britt Allcroft, Rev. W. Awdry
• Producers: Britt Allcroft, Barry London, Brent Baum, Charles Falzon, John Bertolli
• Format: NTSC, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby
• Rated: G (General Audience)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Columbia Tristar Home Video
• VHS Release Date: October 31, 2000
• Run Time: 85 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (199 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00004Y87S
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,631 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Thomas, as anyone familiar with the eponymous, wildly popular TV series knows, is a very useful engine, and never more so than in his first theatrical release, which was a modest box-office success. On a tank filled with little more than pluck, determination, and goodwill, Thomas sets out full steam ahead on a danger-fraught mission to help his friend Mr. Conductor. The conductor's stash of magic gold dust has run out, leaving him stranded on the Island of Sodor with Junior, his flaky cousin, and Lily, a little girl enlisted to lift her grandfather out of a funk on nearby Muffle Mountain. When Thomas bravely chugs beyond his hometown tracks' buffers with Lily aboard, he's transported to Muffle Mountain's secret railway and to Lady, a long-lost steamer whose legendary engine makes her more powerful than Diesel, the train-yard bully. Together, Thomas and Lady lead Diesel on a chase that causes a bridge to collapse, taking the dastardly Diesel down with it. Most impressive about the movie is its marquee names: Alec Baldwin works magic as the dutiful worrywart Mr. Conductor, Mara Wilson is Lily, and Peter Fonda plays the cool-looking but lugubrious Grandpa. It's a cast that'll keep put-upon parents watching, if halfheartedly. Thomas fans 5 and under, meanwhile, will wish the actors wouldn't blow so much hot air; they'll want to see their hero a bigger part in steaming up the story line. --Tammy La Gorce

Product Description

This is Thomas the Tank Engine's first hit movie!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars 3 year old loves it. Adults disappointed and confused., November 25, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Thomas and the Magic Railroad [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Our 3yr old boy loves Thomas. We have all the videos and trains, etc. He wants to watch this thing every day. He repeats lines from the movie and acts them out all day. It was great for him. We took him to the movies to see it together. He loved that, too. For him, we would do it all again in a minute.

As parents, we could have done without the "mean-ness" of Diesel #10 and the fact that he wants to "dominate and destroy". He also uses the word "stupid" several times. Not nice.

As adult movie critics, we saw laughably poor acting (with the exception of "Mr. Conductor" and "Junior". (Notice that even some of the 5-star reviewers agree.) Britt Alcroft directed and wrote it, and it is obvious that she should have asked for help from someone who knew what they were doing. If you pay attention, expect to be confused. We expected more because we actually enjoy watching all of the other videos, and they are really well done.

41 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible movie, April 5, 2005

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Thomas and the Magic Railroad (DVD)

This movie was by far the worst Thomas production ever made. I was horrified when I discovered that Britt Allcroft wrote it; now we know why she always had a co-writer when she was writing episodes for the TV series, and why she was kicked out of Gullane Entertainment afterwards.

The script is so poorly written that I feel sorry for the trees used to make the paper that it was written on. The Island of Sodor, in the TV series an island off the coast of England that was more or less normal, has been turned into a magical ghost town populated by talking trains and literate animals. Why Britt Allcroft chose to make such a rapid departure from the TV series I will never know. She also filled the script with complicated plot devices that few children will be able to understand (you'd need to be Einstein or Stephen Hawking to figure out the answer to the riddle on the windmill wall), and threw her healthy knowledge of the Thomas characters out of the window (Thomas is portrayed as a goody-goody, Bertie as being annoyingly hyperactive, Henry as being a whiny pain in the neck, and James as being so short of brain cells that he doesn't know what the word "shoo" means).

Usually, bad scripts bring in bad acting, and this movie was no exception. Alec Baldwin's character was so annoying (I'm sure I'm not the only person who wishes Diesel 10 had dropped him off the viaduct), and took the limelight that should have been given to Thomas and the other engines. Peter Fonda's character was the most miserable, depressing character in the history of children's movies. Mara Wilson's character was better, but still seemed like a teenage girl younger than her years. And what was the point of having big name actors anyway? It's not as if little children are going to recognise them.

I also find the film to be overly violent. Diesel 10 is so nasty that it's no wonder little children started crying and asking to leave the theater when he made his first appearance. We're never told why he's evil either, he just comes off as a character who wants to destroy steam engines for no reason whatsoever. In the original series, if a character was evil it was usually for a good reason. In a similar fashion, while characters in the TV series might be evil, they never went further than playing tricks on the other engines and trying to get them sent away. Here, Diesel 10 tries to kill Mr Conductor and Junior in scenes that make me amazed the film got a G rating.

Then there's the fact that the steam engines get what can only be described as outstanding cameos. When I went to see this at the theater, I noticed a lot of little children fidgeting and looking bored during the scenes with the human characters. Really I'm not at all surprised that they were; they came to the theater to see their favorite blue engine and his friends, not a Lilliputian railroad conductor who had lost his gold dust.

Last but not least, what can little children learn from this movie? The TV series episodes all have morals in them, like "don't tell lies" and "don't get too full of yourself." Other than a brief line at the end about helping each other, this movie has no moral value in it whatsoever (unless you count teaching children to be senselessly violent a moral).

In September of this year a second Thomas movie is coming out, albeit shorter than this one and being released direct to video, called "Calling All Engines." Cross your fingers and hope it's better than this turkey.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The trains were cute but this movie's awful, February 2, 2005

By 

C. Asher (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Thomas and the Magic Railroad (DVD)

For some reason I can't fathom my daughters love this movie, but sitting through it is painful. The little boy in the movie should consider another career, and Peter Fonda is more wooden than the trains (although if you're in the right mood his performance is almost funny, but mostly it's just painful). Alex Baldwin tried, but the script and the direction kept this movie from being anything more than dismal. The Thomas series is much more entertaining and well-written. Do yourself a favor and don't spend money on this dog.