Discovering the Clocks’ home beneath the floorboards, Potter summons Exterminator Jeff to eliminate the Borrowers, and is sprayed with caustic foam and electrocuted in the process. Police Officer Oliver Steady responds to the disturbance, but Potter manages to throw off his suspicions while Arrietty and Peagreen escape with the will. Eventually Mrs Driver suspects the Boy of stealing after catching him trying to open a curio cabinet full of valuable miniatures. One night she finds Arrietty’s house from the bright candle light shining through the floorboards. Believing this is where he has been caching his stolen goods, she peers beneath the boards and is horrified to discover the Borrowers in their home.
Peter and the Borrowers, this time with Jeff’s help, follow Potter to City Hall to stop him arranging the demolition. He is briefly stalled thanks to the stubborn receptionist giving him maze-like directions to the demolition office in response to his rude behaviour. When he finally reaches the door, he finds himself trapped inside the storeroom instead, were the Clocks tie his hands to his face with sellotape. In his rage, Potter almost sucks the Clocks into a vacuum cleaner when an army of Borrowers unexpectedly turns up to save the Clocks and tie Potter up with wire. As it turns out, Spiller survived the machine at the factory and summoned the army to aid the Clocks.
The Borrowers
He then enters the office, only to find himself tricked and locked in a supply room. Before Potter can vacuum up the family, Spiller arrives with an army of Borrowers who subdue him, and Pod delivers a warning to Potter on behalf of all Borrowers. Pete shows Steady the will, proving Potter’s plan to cheat the Lenders out of their house, and Potter is promptly arrested.
- The four-inch-tall Clock family secretly share a house with the normal-sized Lender family, “borrowing” such items as thread, safety pins, batteries and scraps of food.
- Pod rescues her via the ice dispenser, but is forced to leave one of his gadgets behind.
- Musical director Greg Last and a cast of actor-musicians give attractive settings to the score by James Atherton, even as its klezmer-influenced songs are weighted by their yearning minor keys.
- These diminutive creatures live beneath the floorboards and make use of the matchsticks, teacups and biscuit crumbs discarded above.
- There are no featured reviews for The Borrowers because the movie has not released yet ().
- Along the way, they occasionally bump into a local policeman, Officer Steady, who questions their actions.
- The Borrowers are miniature people who live below a clock in a house located in England.
Meanwhile, Pod and his wife, Homily, discover that their children are missing, and with Peter’s help, track them to the milk factory. Pod rescues Peagreen from drowning in a milk bottle just as Arrietty and Spiller reunite with them. Potter catches them, takes the will and ties them to the cheese machine, intending to drown them in the liquid cheese. Spiller cheeks Potter to the point that Potter dumps him in another machine, apparently killing him.
The Borrowers review – less a wild adventure more an escape from trauma
She is concerned that she didn’t have a feeling when the Boy approached, so she practices by going to a certain passage below the kitchen, which is more frequently trafficked by humans than the rest of the house. There she overhears the cook Mrs Driver and the gardener Crampfurl discussing the Boy. Mrs Driver dislikes children in general and believes the Boy is up to no good, particularly when Crampfurl suspects that the Boy is keeping a pet ferret after seeing him in a field calling for “Uncle something.” After escaping from their home under the kitchen floorboards of an old English manor they finally settle down in the home of a caretaker on the grounds of an old church. A post-credits scene shows Potter trying to describe the Borrowers to Steady while being questioned at the police station. The Lenders move back into their home, as do the Clocks, now with food and assistance from Pete.
The Boy delivers Arrietty’s letter and returns with a mysterious response asking Arrietty to tell Aunt Lupy to come back. After Arrietty confesses everything she has told the Boy, Pod and Homily fear the Boy will figure out where they live and that they will be forced to emigrate. The Boy soon does find the Clocks’ home, but far from wishing them harm, he brings them gifts of dollhouse furniture from the nursery. They experience a period of “borrowing beyond all dreams of borrowing” as the Boy offers them gift after gift. The four-inch-tall Clock family secretly share a house with the normal-sized Lender family, “borrowing” such items as thread, safety pins, batteries and scraps of food. However, their peaceful co-existence is disturbed when evil lawyer Ocious P. Potter steals the will granting title to the house, which he plans to demolish in order to build apartments.
Critic Reviews for The Borrowers
The Clocks get wind of this when Arrietty wanders off and is trapped by Peter, who is actually astonished to discover The Borrowers and offers his help in moving them to their new house. But during the journey, Arrietty and Peagreen fall out of the moving truck and make their way back to the old house, where they find the new house on a map. Potter, seeing the Clocks’ underground home, calls the local exterminator, Jeff, but they manage to escape, with Jeff accidentally burning Potter’s face and moustache off, with expanding foam, in the process. Along the way, they occasionally bump into a local policeman, Officer Steady, who questions their actions.
Forced to flee, she makes a journey with her parents, Homily and Pod, that is an exodus across alien territory, beset by the fear of being seen. Some time later, the Boy’s sister (a young Mrs May) visits the home herself in hopes of proving her brother’s stories were real. She leaves small gifts at the badgers’ sett, which are gone the next time she checks. Later she finds a miniature memoranda book in which the entire story of the Borrowers has been written, presumably by Arrietty. However, when Kate rejoices that the book means that the Borrowers survived and that the whole story was true, Mrs May points out that “Arrietty’s” handwriting was identical to Mrs May’s brother’s.
Peagreen ends up trapped in an empty milk bottle and taken into the factory with Arrietty unable to save him, but another Borrower, Spud Spiller (an “Outie”, for he lives outside), shows up and offers help. Together they manage to make their way through the factory and locate Peagreen and force their way past Potter, dousing him in a shower of liquid cheese in the process. Young Pete Lender sets up traps throughout his home, explaining to his parents, Joe and Victoria, that small household items, which they believe are simply misplaced, are being stolen.
- Mrs Driver dislikes children in general and believes the Boy is up to no good, particularly when Crampfurl suspects that the Boy is keeping a pet ferret after seeing him in a field calling for “Uncle something.”
- A scientist (Stephen Fry) tries to capture members of a miniature family who live beneath the floorboards of a house.
- Peagreen accidentally stumbles and falls into an empty milk bottle and is collected and brought back to the dairy, with Potter, Jeff, and Jeff’s flatulent bloodhound in pursuit, followed by Pete, Pod, and Homily.
- In 1998 it was nominated for the title of Best British Film in the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards, but lost to Gary Oldman’s Nil by Mouth.
To prevent the Boy from helping https://accounting-services.net/financial-accounting-standards-board/ escape, she locks him in his room until it is time for him to return to India. Meanwhile, she hires a rat catcher to fumigate the house in order to trap the Borrowers. Mrs Driver cruelly allows the Boy out of his room so that he can watch when the Borrowers’ bodies are found.