

The marketing doesn’t do it justice, but it’s a surprisingly faithful adaptation and the best Discworld film to date by a huge margin. I might have welled up at the sight of Terry Pratchett’s name in the opening credits, because I realised this was my kids’ first exposure to his wonderful mind, and vowed to encourage them to explore it further if they showed interest. Rincewind and Twoflower even have brief cameos. It’s remarkably faithful to the book, which is just one in a series that’s dozens long. To my absolute shock and delight, it remained a story of Discworld in its translation to a CGI cartoon for children. And Discworld has never quite become the juggernaut that it always felt like it ought. This is significant, because it’s a Discworld novel. Something extraordinary happened over Christmas: I took my kids to see a big screen adaptation of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, starring Hugh Laurie and Emilia Clarke, who are Big Name Actors from Popular Things.
