This movie totally houses the lame Thomas and the Magic Railway movie. This is what a Thomas movie should be. Fun, adventurous, creative, and with a hint of evil at the end...

My son and I love this movie. He is two and a half, I just about 40. From the first act where Sir Topham Hat introduces the "jobi" wood, you know that this movie is in the pocket. Hiro mentioning that jobi wood only grows on one or two locations in his now radioactively challenged island while a tear streams from his eye was genius. Then the not so subtle hint of racism as Diesel says that he wants to win the "Most Useful Engine" of the day contest and have the privilege of pushing the jobi wood to the construction site but Thomas says that Sir Topham Hat was really meant the most useful steam engine as diesels are noisy and dirty...

There are only two faults with this movie; Sir Topham Hat's terrible overacting (like he's on a soap opera) and Thomas mindlessly repeating the rhyme about how he makes good decisions. The res of the movie is brilliant.

Misty Island is great and the hillybilly inspired Logging Locos, Bash, Dash, and Ferdinand are funny and really interesting. Great characters who teach Thomas to let his hair down and not be so uptight and proper.

This movie has a great story, great characters, and great animation. The icing on the cake is at the end of the movie when all the trains are celebrating at the dock, the evil Diesel 10 rolls into frame looking down on the steamies from atop a mountain and vows his revenge. Sure it was probably just a teaser to get everyone interested in th upcoming Day of the Diesels movie but it was still an awesome touch.

I have to say that when Thomas moved from real models to CGI, I was disappointed but this movie shows you how good CGI can be. The trains and sets look like models and sometimes it is hard to tell, it is so well done. Bravo. Bravo.

My son just loves Thomas & Friends. He collects the trains and has watched a number of the original series. This was our first foray into the newer Thomas adventures, and I thought it was well done and kept much of the original flavor and ideals.

Animation (versus the original's use of real-life models) has both pluses and minuses. On the plus is the allowance for greater flexibility in camera shots, more animation of the figures themselves and a wider allowance for possible story lines. On the negative, there will always be something magical about real-world objects when done as well as the original series was.

As for this particular outing, it involves a mysterious island, colorful new characters and adventure as always. The narration is well done, as are the character voices (one major difference with the originals, which are all voiced by the same narrator). The scariest moment being a near "deadly" plunge off the train tracks to the cliffs below.

Nothing too frightening, good values (usefulness, obedience, friendship, etc) and charming visuals should appeal to younger children. It's also nice to have storytelling without frenetic action... a good choice for parents.

With the release of Thomas & Friends: Hero of the Rails (2009),productions were definitely underway at that point for the new era of the show. All episodes were being made completely in CGI and the production changed hands. And from an initial standpoint, that specific feature impressed enough to convert even some of the diehard fans. However, that would change drastically with the next feature that came along. Not only did it annoy the fans of the original series, but even some of the newcomers found it to be an odd direction. There were just too many things going in the execution that did not resemble what used to be the show a year ago. Thus in accordance with all other features released, this was considered a very low point. And quite frankly, it is still seen as one.

The story begins with Sir Topham Hatt making an announcement about his new rescue center that is being built. The center will be made of a certain kind of wood that is very special and difficult to retrieve. Of course the engine asked to bring this cargo was Thomas. However Diesel is up to his usual behavior and decided to take the special wood himself, only to cause a total disaster. After that Sir Topham Hatt has Thomas head to the mainland to get more, only to be lost out at sea and land on a mysterious island covered in fog. While there he meets three new engines by the name Bash, Dash and Ferdinand and learns what they do on the island. Written this time completely by Sharon Miller, the writing is unfortunately not to the standard any of any other Thomas feature to come before. This also includes the quality of the tv show as well.

The pros to this feature are really the supporting elements and the voice cast. The actors who reprise their roles as the engines of Sodor continue to do an adequate job for the characters. The problem though is in the writing itself. The structure of the story starts off okay, but quickly degrades and becomes very elementary. After making a decision that gets recognized by Sir Topham Hatt, Thomas begins to get a big head. Every chance he gets from then on, he would brag about how he makes good decisions. This is repeated so much so that it becomes obnoxious. On top of that is rhyming dialog, which was something the show and other features never included. Worst of all is that it's not even continuous rhyming; it's just clumps of lines that happened to be paired and up rhymed occasionally. This doesn't make the experience any more fun.

Bash, Dash and Ferdinand, could have been interesting characters but the way they communicate is also frustrating. All three will speak together to form sentences and Ferdinand will more often than not finish it with a "That's Right" line. This provides no development at all to these engines and turns them into characters no one will care for. Adding to that are contrived sequences that make no sense and goofy gimmicks. As Thomas discovers misty island, the rail bed raft that he's on, docks perfectly in line with the rails of the land. Something like that is never that perfect. Then there's things like the "shake shake" bridge, a construct that is so feeble looking it still manages to let Thomas and other engines cross it. How is that even remotely possible? It's these types of moments that are downright questionable.

Even with Greg Tiernan returning as director to this feature, it feels like nothing could overcome the silliness that was the writing. Also the blame can't be put on narrators Michael Brandon or Michael Angelis because they were just reading what was given to them. Thankfully the animation and music were acceptable. With the show and other features now being fully converted to CGI, there really isn't anything to point out that looks wrong. Iconic locations like Brendam Docks, Tidmouth Sheds and the Sodor Search and Rescue Center are some of the biggest sights to see. As for misty island, when the fog clears the main place to be featured there is the logging station, which is unique but nowhere near is visually pleasing. The music composed by Robert Hartshorne was nice. Although the whole bit of using iconic themes for characters has been kind of forgotten, the cues still work for the scenes at hand. The ending song though to this feature is middling at best. It depends if you like country music.

Of all the Thomas & Friends features to be made, this is weakest. It has good animation, music and all the right voice actors, but the script is what fouls it all up. The new characters are not developed, the dialog contains unnecessary rhyming and several moments feel too improbable to belong to this series.