Variety
December 23, 2002 - January 3, 2003
TOM & THOMAS
By Derek Elley
A First Floor Features production, in association with Cine II
CV.
Produced by Laurens Geels, Dick Maas. Executive producer, Frank
Thies.
Directed, written by Esme Lammers.
Camera (color), Marc Felperlaan; editor,
Bert Rijkelijkhuizen; music, Paul M. van Brugge;
production designers, Jelier & Schaaf; costume designer, Linda
Bogers.
Reviewed on videocassette, London, Dec.
7, 2002. (In London Film Festival.) English dialogue.
Running time: 111 MIN.
With: Sean Bean, Aaron Johnson, Inday Ba, Derek de Lint, Bill
Stewart, Sean Harris, Geraldine James.
Though it's set in present-day London, there's an almost Dickensian
feel to kidpic "Tom & Thomas," a likable yarn about
a
9-year-old boy and his spiritual twin that is tailor-made for
Christmas or Easter skeds on the small screen. Solid cast, led
by
Sean Bean and tyke thesp Aaron Johnson, plus good production values
make this a professional English-language debut
by Dutch director Esme Lammers, whose enjoyable semi-fantasy,
"Long Live the Queen," was a B.O. hit on home turf in
1996.
Working with an almost identical team, including her partner,
exec producer Dick Maas, Lammers opens the film with a
kidnapping sequence set in snowy, nighttime London that's pure
Victorian. What initially seems to be a dream by Thomas
(Johnson), a lonely middle-class kid who lives with his painter
father, Paul (Bean), turns out to be the start of an adventure
in
which Thomas finds he has an exact double, Tom, a boy at a grim
orphan's home who helps to expose a child-smuggling ring.
Strong cast plays the whole thing in likable style, aided by
attractive, atmospheric lensing on London and Dutch locations
by d.p.
Marc Felperlaan.