Ah, Thomas! Will you never learn? Once again, the perpetually impetuous tank engine (voiced by John Hasler) gets himself in a bit of bother when he tries a new paint job so he can compete in a best decorated engine contest on the mainland; he ends up looking like a half-finished Jackson Pollock for most of the running time. Luckily, Sodor-newcomer Ashima (Tina Desai), a multicoloured bombshell from India with eyes like Aishwarya Rai, doesn’t seem to mind and sees through the bluster and blunders to Thomas’s innate good nature. While the inclusive, just-be-yourself moral message is didactically sound, this CGI phase of the animated train franchise sorely lacks the charm of the original low-tech shows. The limited, exaggerated expressions on the models were exactly what made them so charming. Plus, this specific instalment is kind of a snooze compared with 2011’s comparatively pacey, sinister Day of the Diesels or the complex human-locomotive interactions of Sodor’s Legend of the Lost Treasure from last year. Also, there’s not enough of Emily here, the Scots-voiced tomboy train with the elegantly long funnel.
