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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jian" data-source="post: 9767089" data-attributes="member: 78087">I've also read two books because we just watched live-action Disney films based on them. So this is sort of a review of the films as well as the books.Candleshoe is a charming Jodie Foster film from 1976, where she plays an American delinquent (from one of those highly convincing multi-ethnic street urchin gangs you apparently got in LA in the 70s) who is recruited into a scheme to pretend to be the long-lost heir to Candleshoe, a manor in Warwickshire. Not because the Candleshoes have cash, but because there's a treasure hidden on the grounds. There's a lovely cast - Helen Hayes as the grandmother, David Niven as her faithful butler who also pretends to be other members of staff, and Leo McKern as the baddie.The book it's based on, Christmas at Candleshoe by Michael Innes, is whimsically ghastly. You can see the ghost of a good story in there - Americans plan to buy a run-down old manor called Candleshoe which is defended by young evacuees and which has a treasure hidden in it (two Titians stolen from a brothel in the 18th century, don't ask) - but it basically makes no sense and has some very awkward assumptions. I congratulate the Disney writers for getting any kind of functional story out of it at all.That Darn Cat is a lovely 1965 Disney film about a cat who's a witness to a kidnapping and the hapless FBI agent who is recruited by his owner into tracking down the kidnappers and the victim. It's based on the book Undercover Cat by Gordon and Mildred Gordon, who wrote thrillers together. Thankfully, the book and the film are much more similar, except swapping the ages of the two sisters who own the cat, mostly so that Hayley Mills gets to help the detective but not be his love interest (she's only 19 and that would be gross).(There's a 1997 remake of  the film which is apparently terrible.)</blockquote>

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