My son loves it and it's enjoyable enough to watch as an adult.

Taking inspiration from irresponsible Australian racing car Ace, Thomas determines to be the first engine to travel round the world. On his journey, he meets assorted engines from other countries, and gets into assorted escapades.

I grew up in the 1950s with the Rev. W Awdry's original Railway Books - short tales featuring a group of engines with personalities of small boys, in which various real-life railway occurrences were tweaked to be due to misbehaving engines, enabling gentle morals to be drawn. Each page of text was matched with a painting (gorgeous stuff by C Reginald Dalby in the early books),and all was set in a gently bucolic version of mid-20th century England. This was long before any thought of merchandising or brand exploitation.

And so we arrive in 2018, at which points the rights to produce Thomas material moved from Britt Allcroft's careful and affectionate model-based adaptations of the original stories to the CGI original material from current owners Mattel. Which brings us to...

Thing is, i started this film expecting to be enormously annoyed by it, and I wasn't. The multicultural inclusivity is rather woke, but it is done fairly tastefully and it, and the mirality ofvThomas' mishaps - don't listen to bad advice when you know it's bad, think of others, don't do stupid and dangerous things - are all morals Awdry would have been pleased to see. It is surely a good thing for Thomas and his friends to forge a new generation of enthisiastic young fans, albeit he has to have his horizons expanded in order to do so. And the Thomas we see here is clearly still Awdry's Thomas, despite - and here is my only big gripe: it is a big one though - despite his American accent. BecausecThomas is quintessentially English.

That aside, this is quite a good fil for youngish children. The CGI is adequate, albeit not dazzling. The film is colourful, and the script does its job.

Not sure why it's got an average review. My toddler is obsessed and he won't watch the original Thomas the tank engine so it's amazing he's now into something me and my husband used to watch as kids!

I was wondering why the songs stuck in my head like a Disney movie. Like to the point where we are humming them around the house. Then we looked it up and realised Peter Andre voiced the car ace! No wonder the songs are so good!

Nia is an amazing character and such a good friend and role model for my son and the way the story plays out is really good for him to learn how to treat people around him.

Not only that but he is speaking so much more now because he is completely in love with the characters.

Big thumbs up from us for learning, fun, good singalongs and story.