A Feast at Midnight

A throwback to the days of the Children's Film Foundation: well-spoken kids teach a few bumbling adults a thing or two and sort everything out in time for a happy ending. Arriving at bleak Dryden Park prep school, new boy Magnus (Findlay) starts a secret food club to win over his classmates, tangles with a variety of public school types (Lee, Hardy, West), and falls in puppy love with a master's daughter (Faulkner). All the while, he writes to his sick father (Fox), honorary chairman of the Scoffers, and upper-class dispenser of culinary and life-related wisdom. There's the germ of a good family movie here but neither the script nor the production values are of a very high order.