The Highway Rat (2017)
My son has watched plenty of things once and forgotten them by teatime. The Highway Rat was not one of them. He came out of it obsessed, quoting the thing for weeks afterward, and honestly that's about the highest praise a half-hour film for small children can earn. It tells you something real, something a star rating can't quite capture on its own.
It's the latest of Magic Light's Julia Donaldson adaptations, from the same run of BBC Christmas half-hours that gave us The Gruffalo and Stick Man, and director Jeroen Jaspaert works with a clear feel for what that house style is actually for. These aren't films trying to compete with a Pixar budget or dazzle anyone with technical ambition. They're trying to do something much harder in its own quiet way: take a beloved picture book and put it on screen without breaking the spell.
A lot of the charm rests on the voices. David Tennant plainly relishes the title role, all swagger and menace pitched exactly right for the age group. He's villainous enough to be exciting without tipping into anything that's going to send a four-year-old behind the sofa. Rob Brydon narrates with the warmth these stories live or die on, and the two of them together give the whole thing a real sense of occasion. The animation keeps faith with Axel Scheffler's picture-book illustrations rather than trying to outdo them, and that restraint is the whole point. It's soft, bright and easy for small eyes to follow, never straining for more than it needs to be. I've got a lot of time for animated films that know their own register. I wrote about how much I admired that quality in The Red Turtle, a very different kind of film but one that earns similar respect for committing completely to a specific visual language and trusting the audience to meet it there.
The score does its quiet work underneath everything, and at twenty-five minutes the film is gone before it can outstay its welcome. That discipline matters more than people give it credit for. There are features three times the length that would benefit from learning it.
There's nothing here to trouble a grown-up hunting for depth, and it isn't reaching for that either. It knows precisely what it is and delivers it without a wasted minute. A roguish rat on horseback, a string of rhymes that stick in the head, a gentle moral and a running time short enough that you barely have to negotiate a bedtime. Job done, and done with genuine craft and affection.
If Magic Light ever spin it into a returning series the way they have with The Gruffalo, I won't complain, and neither will my son. A lovely, unfussy little thing.
Three and a half stars.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2017 | Watched: 2026-08-11
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
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Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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