Room on the Broom & Smeds and the Smoos

Hyde Park Picture House is running a double bill of Julia Donaldson's animated classics on Friday 30 October, with Room on the Broom and The Smeds and the Smoos playing back-to-back. Both are based on the children's books Donaldson wrote and Axel Scheffler illustrated, so if you've read them with your kids, you'll recognise the stories. The session starts at 11:00 and runs for 51 minutes, which is just about an hour of animation in one go.

Room on the Broom (2012) is the older of the two, 25 minutes long. It's the one about a kind witch who keeps inviting a growing collection of animals to join her on her broom, much to the annoyance of her cat, until the whole gang has to team up to save her from a fearsome dragon. The Smeds and the Smoos (2022) is the newer addition, 26 minutes, and takes things into outer space: two young aliens from warring families fall in love and run away, leading their relatives on a chase across the stars. Between them, they make up the full 51 minutes.

There's a decent voice cast across the two. Sally Hawkins, Simon Pegg and Bill Bailey all lend their voices, and the films were directed by Jan Lachauer, Max Lang, Samantha Cutler and Daniel Snaddon. It's a morning slot, so it's one of those things you can do with the little ones before lunch.

The screening is part of the cinema's Hyde & Seek and Spooky Season family-film strands, which they've been running throughout the autumn. It's on Friday 30 October at 11:00, and the whole thing wraps up in 51 minutes.