the grey lioness reads: The Secret of Moonacre

Title: The Secret of Moonacre
Director: Gabor Csupo
Rating: PG
Length: 103 Minutes
Tagline: A magical journey begins!
Synopsis: A 13-year-old girl (played by The Golden Compass' Dakota Blue Richards) discovers that she is the only hope for banishing an ancient curse from a magical kingdom in director Gabor Csupo's adaptation of author Elizabeth Goudge's 1946 children's book The Little White Horse. Ioan Gruffudd, Tim Curry, and Juliet Stevenson co-star in a film penned by screenwriting partners Graham Alborough and Lucy Shuttleworth. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

My Rating:(★★★★) Not many people have heard of this movie since it was premiered mainly in Europe, honestly, I hadn’t even heard of it until I came across someone talking about it on a costuming blog where the woman that wrote the blog had bought one of the dresses from the movie that Loveday wore. I immediately had to look it up and see what the movie was about because that one dress was so amazing!

The Secret of Moonacre movie is based on the book by Elizabeth Gouge called The Little White Horse. It’s about Maria Merryweather (Dakota Blue Richards), who is an orphan sent to Moonacre Valley to live with her Uncle, Sir Benjamin (Ioan Gruffudd). Maria’s governess, Miss Heliotrope, accompanies her to her Uncle’s home where Maria discovers that she is the last Moon Princess and Moonacre Valley’s only remaining hope in breaking the curse that the entire valley is under that will culminate in the next full moon.

My favorite thing about this movie is not the acting, because in all honesty I think that the acting is not stellar. There are some times when Ioan Gruffudd’s acting seems a little bit off, like in one scene he yells at Maria, “Do you ever stop asking questions?!” and his eyes are full of tears. I didn’t understand it. He is my one main complaint about the movie, his relationship with Maria isn’t conveyed through the acting, I am not sure if it’s because, solely, of his acting or if there were scenes taken out of the movie that should have been left in, or what. He also comes across as this gruff crabby Uncle, but near the end calls Maria a “dear sweet girl”, where’d that come from? Just seemed a sudden turnaround to me.

Even with my complaints about the acting, I loved the movie and now own it on Blu-Ray and have watched it several times since receiving it in the mail. I love Dakota Blue Richards of The Golden Compass fame (yet another movie that could have been better but I still like it- at least until I watched my DVD version of it and the entire ending was changed from how it was in the theaters), I love the ending of the movie the best, where it seems they used the majority of their special effects budget (other than Wrolf).

My favorite thing about the movie is the costumes. I can’t describe how much I love them so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.