Ian McEwan's book, when I read it, was a gnarly knot of plots held together not by sense nor a desire to entertain a reader but seemingly by a want to be clever about the theme of childhood and Time, and certainly some of the threads of his book - a child lost in a moment, a successful first time writer whose bestseller is mistaken for a children's book, a friend who is reverting to childhood, and a government enacting policy regarding child literacy - are interesting, most included here, but even in this adaptation, the tone is heavy, droll, haughty, and like the book, the movie is smug, joyless and left me wondering whether the point is simply recognising the author's smarts.
★★☆☆☆
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