Childhood Fantasy Still Works Surprisingly Well

Read Time:10 Minute, 25 Second

MOVIE REVIEWS
The Borrowers
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Genre: Family, Fantasy, Adventure
Year Released: 1997, 2026 Blu-ray
Runtime: 1h 27m
Director: Peter Hewitt
Writers: Gavin Scott, John Kamps, based on the novels by Mary Norton
Cast: John Goodman, Jim Broadbent, Celia Imrie, Flora Newbigin, Tom Felton, Raymond Pickard, Bradley Pierce, Hugh Laurie, Mark Williams
Where to Watch: available September 29, 2026. Pre-order your copy here: www.moviesunlimited.com or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: Within a few minutes of watching THE BORROWERS, I kept thinking about THE LITTLES, the animated series I remember from years ago. Tiny people hiding inside the walls, ordinary household objects becoming useful tools and furniture, and an entire secret society existing just beyond the awareness of normal-sized humans all felt immediately familiar. The comparison makes complete sense, though not quite in the way I initially assumed.

There isn't a direct connection between Peter Hewitt's THE BORROWERS and the animated THE LITTLES, but both come from remarkably similar children's books. Mary Norton's first THE BORROWERS novel was published in 1952, while John Peterson's THE LITTLES arrived in 1967 and was eventually adapted into the ABC cartoon that ran from 1983 through 1985. The Borrowers look completely human despite being only a few inches tall. At the same time, the Littles eventually gained their more recognizable mouse-like ears, teeth, and tails. Still, the basic fantasy of another family secretly sharing your house stays the same.

That familiarity probably helped me settle into THE BORROWERS faster than I expected. I hadn't watched this movie in years, and the concept still has that immediate childhood appeal of imagining that every missing button, safety pin, or scrap of food might've been repurposed by somebody living underneath the floor. Peter Hewitt takes that simple idea and turns practically every room in the house into an enormous playground.

The Clock family lives secretly inside the home of the Lenders, surviving by "borrowing" tiny amounts of whatever the humans above them won't miss. Pod (Jim Broadbent) handles most of the dangerous trips into the giant world, while Homily (Celia Imrie) tries to maintain some sense of normal family life underground. Their children, Arrietty (Flora Newbigin) and Peagreen (a very young Tom Felton), are considerably more interested in finding out what exists beyond the safety of their hidden home.

Their arrangement works because the Lenders don't know the Clocks exist. Pete Lender (Bradley Pierce) eventually discovers the truth, but he's far more fascinated than frightened and becomes their connection to the full-sized world. That relationship becomes important when lawyer Ocious P. Potter (John Goodman) steals the document proving the Lenders own their house and begins pushing forward with plans to destroy it.

That's more plot than the movie really needs, but it provides an excuse to get the Clock family out from behind the walls. Once they're separated from their home, Hewitt keeps finding new ways to make a world built for humans dangerous for four-inch-tall people. A simple kitchen appliance becomes machinery, a milk-bottling plant turns into a death trap, and pipes become highways once someone figures out how to build the right little vehicle.

The production design is where THE BORROWERS remains most enjoyable. Plenty of effects are involved, but the movie understands that convincing scale isn't just about making one actor appear smaller beside another. Objects have to work differently when the characters using them are four inches tall, and the movie constantly looks for ways to repurpose familiar things.

That attention to detail gives the Clock family's hidden home more personality than a generic miniature set would've provided. Everyday human objects become decorations, tools, and furniture because everything has been borrowed from somewhere else. Part of the fun is recognizing what something originally was before seeing what the Borrowers decided it could become.

The effects themselves have held up better than I expected. They're obviously products of the late 1990s, and a few composites reveal their age. Still, Hewitt relies enough on physical sets, oversized props, and forced scale that the movie rarely feels trapped by dated digital technology. The actors usually appear to occupy the same space even when the illusion is doing a tremendous amount of work.

The environments also have a tactile quality that modern family fantasies sometimes lose. Things look dirty when they're supposed to be dirty, the walls and pipes have texture, and the Clock family's surroundings feel built instead of generated. At their size, every scratch and dent in an ordinary household object becomes part of the scenery.

Jim Broadbent is almost perfectly cast as Pod. He gives the character enough seriousness to make the dangers feel real, without forgetting that we're watching a children's adventure about a miniature man swinging from household fixtures. Broadbent plays Pod as a father first, which keeps his constant warnings and cautiousness from becoming annoying.

Celia Imrie matches him nicely as Homily, especially because she gets to be much more openly nervous about everything happening around them. There’s a recognizable family dynamic underneath the fantasy. Pod believes he can prepare for danger, Homily assumes every possible disaster is seconds away, and their children can't understand why either parent wants them to stay home when an enormous, unexplored world sits directly above their heads.

Flora Newbigin gives Arrietty the right amount of rebellion without making her exhausting. She wants independence because she's reached the age where being protected feels suspiciously similar to being trapped, and that naturally pushes her toward the human world. The character's curiosity matters because THE BORROWERS works better when the larger world feels exciting rather than simply threatening.

Tom Felton is almost startling to see this young, years before Draco Malfoy made him instantly recognizable. Peagreen isn't nearly as important as Arrietty, but Felton can already make a reaction register clearly without much dialogue. It's one of those performances that becomes more interesting in retrospect because we know exactly where the actor's career eventually went.

Then there's John Goodman, who seems to understand that subtlety would be completely useless here. Ocious P. Potter isn't merely greedy; he's practically a live-action cartoon villain who becomes increasingly furious at the idea that tiny people are interfering with his plans. Goodman goes enormous with the performance, which is appropriate considering he's literally enormous from the Borrowers' perspective.

His physical comedy becomes especially entertaining once Potter starts actively hunting them. Goodman can turn something as simple as noticing movement across a room into a full-body reaction, and the size difference permits him to behave like a monster stomping through somebody else's world. He's ridiculous, but the movie needs ridiculous.

Mark Williams gets similar freedom as the exterminator dragged into Potter's obsession. His presence adds another comedic layer to those later sequences, as the adults trying to capture these tiny people often become more destructive than the supposedly unwanted creatures. Hugh Laurie and Ruby Wax also turn up in smaller roles, adding to a supporting cast that's much stronger than I remembered.

Where THE BORROWERS loses me somewhat is in its need to keep escalating. The simple idea of the Clocks navigating an ordinary house is often more entertaining than the larger adventure built around Potter's development scheme. Once the family gets scattered and the movie begins moving through increasingly elaborate locations, some of the charm of discovering their hidden domestic world gets left behind.

The story also becomes extremely broad whenever Potter takes over. That's fun to a point, but the villainy is so exaggerated that there isn't much tension surrounding the actual property dispute. Nobody is wondering whether Potter might have a reasonable argument, and the plot mostly becomes a mechanism for getting Goodman into rooms where tiny people can torment him.

I would've happily spent more time simply exploring how Borrowers live. That's also where my memories of THE LITTLES kept returning, because the strongest part of both concepts isn't necessarily adventure. It's imagining an entire functioning domestic life happening inside places we normally ignore.

The differences between them are interesting too. The Littles I remembered from television looked almost like a bridge between humans and mice, complete with tails, while the Clocks simply appear to be people reduced to a fraction of normal size. That makes THE BORROWERS slightly stranger because there isn't an obvious explanation for what they are. They don't look like another species so much as people who somehow evolved an entire hidden civilization underneath ours.

That mystery is more appealing than any explanation probably would've been. Children don't need a detailed scientific reason for tiny people living behind the walls, and the movie wisely doesn't waste time trying to provide one. The entire premise works because it turns a house into something much larger than we normally perceive.

That sense of scale also gives the action more creativity than its basic plot deserves. Falling from a countertop becomes a genuine threat, transportation requires improvisation, and something designed to move liquid can suddenly function like an amusement-park ride. Hewitt continually looks at familiar environments from the Borrowers' height instead of simply shrinking the actors and calling the job finished.

Harry Gregson-Williams' music helps give those sequences a larger sense of adventure without overwhelming the comedy. The score treats the Clock family's problems seriously enough that children can invest in them, even while adults understand how inherently silly it is to watch tiny people fleeing a furious John Goodman.

Mill Creek's new Blu-ray arrives September 29 in retro VHS-style packaging, an especially appropriate way to reintroduce a movie tied to the era of discovering family films on video-store shelves. The movie itself actually dates to 1997, although its American theatrical release followed in 1998, which explains why listings aren't always consistent about the year.

A 3.5/5 feels right for me because THE BORROWERS remains more imaginative than I remembered. The story is straightforward, the villain is enormous in every possible sense, and some of the later action starts overpowering the smaller pleasures that make the premise interesting. However, the production design and practical sense of scale give it a personality that still works.

More importantly, it unlocked an unexpected memory of THE LITTLES that made the whole experience a little more enjoyable. I went into THE BORROWERS thinking those similarities were probably something my brain had invented after several decades, only to discover that the two stories genuinely belong to the same tradition of miniature fantasy, with Norton's books arriving first and helping establish many of the ideas Peterson would later explore. Sometimes revisiting an older family movie doesn't just remind you of that movie; it unexpectedly opens another little door in the wall.

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[photo courtesy of MOVIES UNLIMITED, ALLIANCE HOME ENTERTAINMENT, MILL CREEK]

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