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ladyillana
Reviews
Back Home (2001)
Interesting, but flawed
This was a great TV movie, but it really missed the point of the book. Rusty, in the book, is not able to accept the changes in her mother that occur over the war period, just as her mother cannot accept the changes in Rusty until the end of the book. The Disney movie captured this well even if it did gloss over the more brutal aspects of her parents' relationship. This movie seemed more a vehicle for Sarah Lancaster and a fleshing out of Peggy's character than the mother and daughter relationship that is central to the book. It also really doesn't spend much time on Rusty's own difficulties fitting in to post-war Britain after being a sea-vacuee to America for five years. Jessica Fox did a marvelous job with what she was given as did the rest of the cast, and it made a good movie, but the 1996 Disney movie is truer to the heart of the novel, and it's really ashame it's out of print so most viewers will not be able to compare them.
Back Home (1989)
True to the Novel's heart
This is a good version of the Michelle Magorian novel, "Back Home". It stays focused on the novel's central premise of learning to understand one another particularly after changes wrought in difficult circumstances, and really lets the viewer see how a young girl who has spent 5 year in America is vilified and discouraged when she returns to Post WWII Britain and the unfriendly and strange environment of boarding school. The movie does "Disneyfy" the ending and glosses over the intense family strain that occurs in the last chapters of the novel, but all in all it is a nice version and well worth watching. Too bad it's out of print.