Fairy Tale A True Story of the Cottingley Fairies Movie Review

Fairy Tale: A True Story is a period film set in 1917, which is suitable for the entire family. It starts at a theatrical presentation of Peter Pan with Peter demanding of the audience, "If you believe in fairies, clap your hands!" In response, the audience roars their belief.

This movie is an interesting story for adults as well as children because it is based somewhat loosely on the a true story of the Cottingley fairies and because it questions the very existence of fairies.

In real life as in the story, two little girls took pictures in their garden of the fairies who lived there. At the time of photographs, the early 1900s, photographic pictures were often taken to be proof that a thing existed as photographic trickery was virtually unknown and the idea that two little girls in Yorkshire, England, could have proven the very existence of fairies was really quite an exceptional idea.

Those pictures soon drew attention from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Harvey Keitel), who eventually wrote a book about fairies called The Coming of the Fairies and of Houdini (Peter O'Toole), who was intrigued by trickery of all sorts. The entire world wanted to know if these photos were indeed proof that fairies do exist.

This movie is beautifully filmed, very well acted and entertaining. It does, however, draw criticism for the way it handled the true story. Perhaps, I cannot help but think, it would have been better named simply, Fairy Tale. It does tell of what happened in England and the world when two young girls took photographs of the fairies in their garden but it also takes liberties, adding in details that were not part of the real story. For fear of ruining the movie for you, I will not go into those details but just caution that this is not a documentary nor a totally true-to-live story. If you are interested in reading more about the real story of the Cottingly fairies, you can click here. If you are interested in a fantastic fairy movie, you will find more information including the movie trailer right here on this page.

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