The Secret Garden

While promoting a healthy imagination and sense of self-discovery, The Secret Garden might be too vivid for its own good.

The latest big-screen adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s venerable coming-of-age novel is a handsomely mounted period piece that emphasizes lavish visual gimmicks at the expense of emotional depth.

Purists might bristle at some structural alterations of the text, such as the post-World War II setting. In the late 1940s, Mary (Dixie Egerickx) is a 10-year-old orphan sent to live at the Yorkshire estate of her widowed uncle (Colin Firth), whose past tragedies have essentially rendered him a recluse.

Still reeling from the deaths of her parents, Mary’s misery is compounded by her interactions with an austere housekeeper (Julie Walters), although she does bond with an invalid cousin (Edan Hayhurst) over a mutual desire for catharsis and closure.

Mary’s only source of serenity comes via clandestine trips to an expansive garden where her mother played as a child. That’s where she meets Dickon (Amir Wilson), a youngster who holds the key to the garden’s magical powers that are only accessible via imagination. Their mischievous escapes enable Mary to indirectly and temporarily flee the harshness of the real world.

As another exploration of childhood innocence and coping mechanisms, viewers in the target demographic might relate to Mary as they experience both reality and fantasy through her precocious eyes. Adults won’t find much to grasp, however, in contrast to the superior 1993 movie version of the same book.

In a breakthrough role, Egerickx’s expressive performance conveys both Mary’s wide-eyed curiosity and her burgeoning bitterness and recalcitrance toward her circumstances. Much of the film’s turmoil is internalized, which adds weight to the shoulders of the young actress who’s in virtually every frame.

However, the screenplay by Jack Thorne (Wonder) suffers from awkward narrative transitions and an overall lack of subtlety. The final act is more heavy-handed than profound as it confronts the challenges of processing grief at such an impressionable age.

Along the way, the film’s dalliances with Alice in Wonderland-style magical realism rely too heavily on special effects. Plus, it tends to overdose on cuteness, especially during Mary’s playful sequences with an adorably shaggy stray dog.

Although it might suitably introduce the source material to a new generation of children, The Secret Garden struggles to retain the same charming spirit.

Rated PG, 99 minutes.