YMMV / Candleshoe

• Adaptation Displacement: More people remember this Disney offering than the original book Christmas at Candleshoe by J. I. M. Stewart (a.k.a. Michael Innes). The film straddles the line between Recognizable Adaptation and an In Name Only one (and not even that, since the names only have one word in common). Both share the premise of a stately English manor threatened by foreclosure being defended by children, but in the book, the danger is an American developer who wants to turn Candleshoe into a tourist trap. There's no lost granddaughter, no con-artists, no quick-changing butler, and no pirates. Also the book is a rather dry, understated novel for adults—nothing that would scar a kid for life, but very little to hold their interest, either.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: For an otherwise straightforward kid's adventure movie, there's a remarkably complex (and largely unmentioned) backstory regarding the divorce of Margaret's presumably titled parents, Margaret's noncustodial abduction by her father and their subsequent flight to America, and the fact that both Margaret and her father vanished, leaving only their empty crashed car as a clue to their fates. Someone get on that mystery.

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