Fireman Sam: The Great Fire of Pontypandy
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 Great fires of...Pontypandy! Sam had the chance to save the day by making this movie and turn it good, and he screwed it up!
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Fireman Sam: The Great Fire Of Pontypandy (commonly just referred to as The Great Fire Of Pontypandy) is an hour long movie based off beloved British TV Show Fireman Sam. It is the first of the Fireman Sam film franchise.
Plot
All seems well in the village of Pontypandy, with the classic saves and rescues, but when Norman and his cousin Derek start a fire in the forest whilst in a trip, they unintentionally start a forest fire! What will it take Sam and the team to control and stop the fire before all of Pontypandy is destroyed?
In a stormy night, Charlie Jones is working in the lighthouse. But the wind causes him and the lighthouse door to blow over, leaving Charlie clinging onto the railings of the Lighthouse. Eventually, Fireman Sam and Elvis Cridlington save him and manage to replace the broken lighthouse light as well. One month later, Sam is given an award by Chief Fire Officer Boyce, who offers him a promotion to head the rapid response service in Newtown. Sam promises to think about it until the end of the day, which is soon interrupted by a call informing them that Mike Flood has fallen off the boathouse roof and into the sea. As Sam is passing by Trevor Evans in his bus, he tells Sam that Trevor is going to take the Pontypandy Pioneers camping in the forest, who warns that the campfires are not allowed due to the very hot temperatures and the forest being too dry. Meanwhile, Dilys Price has invited Derek on a camping trip with the other Pontypandy Pioneers. As they leave, Norman sneaks some sausages into his bag, who refused to eat bugs and berries.
At the Flood's house, Helen and Mandy are having trouble getting their car to work due to Mike's other works, with the former suggesting they go and find the Pioneers on foot instead, as they were all planning to spend family time together. Back on the camping trip, Trevor sets up a mantrap to trap something, but after not finding anything, he leaves it without deactivating the trap. As Helen and Mandy are trying to find the campsite, Helen steps into the mantrap that Trevor set up minutes earlier. Sam and Penny Morris leave the station, but as Elvis and Radar are already there, Helen is rescued. Back at the Fire Station, Boyce tells Elvis how brave Station Officer Steele was fighting a fire, and this gets Elvis thinking on how to be a true hero like everyone else has been. Steele himself is informed by Sam about the Pioneers Camping Trip, and that the hot weather could set a small spark of fire into a massive flame in seconds. Sam and Elvis set up signs to warn about it, while Trevor and the Pioneers get along ahead with their walk. Upon finishing setting up the Fire signs, Elvis soon discovers that Sam may leave Pontypandy to take in the promotion at Newtown. After sneaking off, Norman and Derek cook the sausages in the campfire, ignoring all the fire warnings and sets fire to old wood using a sharp wood pin. Dilys finds them but fails to notice the fire, which soon expands.
Meanwhile, at the lighthouse, Mike forgot his phone and the hammer and soon locks himself in the lighthouse after he mends the door. He soon sees smoke coming from the forest and as his mobile is locked out, he uses the lighthouse to spell "FOREST FIRE" in Morse Code, but actually spells "FOREST FIRT". Sam and Penny read the code and call Steele to the forest. The campsite group smell the smoke and leave the campsite to get out of the forest. The fire spreads to the campsite. Elvis and Radar find the group and follow Venus' siren, getting out of the forest before the fire engulfs it. Tom attempts to dampen the forest down in his helicopter but has no effect so Station Officer Steele warns everyone that if they cannot contain it, they will have to evacuate the town.
Norman suggests that they should call other fire engines from Newtown, but Steele tells him that they would be too far away to get there in time. By this point, the fire has completely cut the group off. Sam suggests that everyone can help by flattening the grass at the edge of the forest and keeping the heat down with the hoses. The fire reaches the edge of the forest, and the four firefighters attack it with too little effect. A falling branch nearly hits Sam, but Elvis comes to the rescue, diving and pushing Sam out of the way. The fire is soon proven to be too much for the firefighters to handle, and soon Steele then tells everyone to retreat to collect Boyce and go straight to the harbour as the fire is unbeatable and leave Pontypandy to be burned underneath the waves of fire. They take one last look at the fire station and set off. The vehicles drive to the harbour as Sam looks at the stormy clouds, pleading them to come towards the fire. As everyone gets all aboard Charlie's boat, the rain pours down and puts out the fire to everyone's delight.
As Norman and Derek celebrate not moving out of Pontypandy, the former's backpack flies up high, opens up and Radar soon reveals the sausages that the two tried to cook earlier. Everyone is shocked, with a furious Steele scolding Norman for setting the forest on fire, and Dilys says that she will make sure Norman is properly dealt with. Boyce is impressed with Sam, and the latter rejects his Newtown Fire Station offer, and decides to stay in Pontypandy because he sees the town needs him. A month following the Great Fire of Pondypandy, Steele and Boyce reward Elvis for saving Sam and for his outstanding bravery. Trevor also rewards Mandy, Sarah and James with Survivor Medals, while Norman and Derek get nothing at all, blaming each other for wanting sausages. Mike also apologizes to Mandy and Helen for not spending time with each other and agree to do so. The townsfolk holding a huge party to celebrate and follows on with the music video "He's Our Friend".
Bad Qualities That Are On Fire (In An Average Way)
- To begin off, the production of this movie is just completely wasteful and abusive on the Fireman Sam franchise, as whilst the show already went downhill starting in Season 6, there was a very unlikely chance this would help. Understandably...it didn't. Plus, this is a major sign of the show jumping the shark even more, as whilst Season 6 jumped the shark, this movie just completely began more shocking episodes in the series.
- The movie is also a perfect representation on how flanderized Norman has become. He ignores Trevor's warning on making a camp fire and does it anyways so he could cook sausages, and when he gets caught trying to make a fire, he manages to get off free but doesn't even put the smoke out, allowing the heat to turn it into flames, which leads to a massive forest fire! Not only that, but when the fire consumes most of the forest, the firefighters have no choice but to abandon Pontypandy and leave their town to burn up! By the way, remember this is all happening just because of Norman's selfishness and egotistical personality just to get what he wants, and without the luck of the rainstorm later in the movie, the town of Pontypandy would be destroyed, and it would all be Norman's fault! Not to mention, even though Derek for the most part is innocent (since it was only Norman's idea for stealing and cooking the sausages), Derek should have known better to let his cousin create a fire in such hot weather. In fact, he acknowledges how Trevor warned him, yet he still goes along with it.
- Poor pacing, the scenes last way to long. Without them the movie would be shorter and feel more like a special, which could have fit more. In fact, the concept of fighting a forest-fire itself has been done multiple times without an actual movie. For example, in the Season 12 episode, "Blazing A Trail", Norman starts a forest fire AGAIN (albeit on accident), which after some not so exciting plot, at the end they all escape. How come that can last 10 minutes whilst this has to last 1 hour?
- Poor writing and "jokes" as always, which is weird since it appears they are trying to be serious. One major example is is Sam's terrible quote "What's a forest firt?".
- The plot is also very abprut and switchy. For example, the rain is a stupid inserted plot-device that abruptly is shoved at the end of the climax to resolve the situation. The movie has a pointless sub-plot of Elvis trying to prove himself as useful as the other members of the Fire Service as he feels like as if he hasn't got any attention from others and tries to do a heroic act to prove himself as a worthy firefighter, while it could be a nice concept, at the same time, it feels incredibly generic and has already been used tons of other movies before this one. Not to mention, it has nothing to do with the movie itself and is quickly forgotten about until the end of the movie where he does receive honour for his actions, making Elvis' development in this movie rather meaningless and weak in general.
- The movie tries to go for a more serious and mature tone than the stop-motion and CGI series since the movie is about Pontypandy getting plagued with a forest fire that Norman accidentally set up with a pack of Sausages in the middles of a few trees with a camp fire by the way, and it's shown nearly at the end of the movie where everything gets dramatic and the Fire Crew cannot put out the forest fire at all and will very likely burn the entirety of Pontypandy down to the ground, which sounds like a unique concept for Fireman Sam and feels something new for the series, however it isn't executed very well due to nearly all of it being wasted by a bad plot and awful writing that hurts the potential that this movie could've had.
- The animation from Xing Xing Digital still looks atrocious even with the more updated visuals, as the effects on the forest fire of Pontypandy look very ugly and the character models are still hideous-looking and overall emotionless. Not even the new characters look very good and are just as abominable-looking as the main characters in the CGI series themselves.
- Not even the music changed, it's quite literally the same soundtracks and repetitive rescue music from the original show. You'd think they'd make a new soundtrack for a movie, and they didn't, showing the producers laziness in the movie.
- Misleading Title: Despite being called The Great Fire Of Pontypandy, the first half of the movie isn't even focused on the campfire disaster at all, as it still plays out like a regular typical episode of the CGI Series, and it isn't until halfway into the movie where the forest fire plot point starts becoming relevant in the movie which happens almost 40 minutes and a half into the movie which contradicts the marketing that the movie had to offer, making the main plot point of this movie feel like it was wasted just to be heavily advertised out of context. It also takes almost 7 minutes just to get everyone out of the forest fire, and the scene of the firefighters fighting the forest fire as well literally only lasts 5 minutes before they give up. And finally, the rain plot twist occurs 8 minutes before the movie is even over, which is way too late for a twist.
- The movie tries to balance it's many sub-plots that are happening all at once, but fails massively due to them being poorly written and serving no purpose other than being filler to extend the running time, which makes the movie rather unfocused and confused at best as it's the main reason why the movie should've been a regular episode instead.
- The movie is incredibly boring at best, since nothing interesting really happens in the movie as their isn't any engaging or hype-inducing moment that excites the viewer mainly due to most of the movie itself technically being a one-hour episode of the CGI series with the same tropes and clichés that often happen in those seasons, and since the entirety of this movie plays most of it's material rather too safely and doesn't experiment with the formula of the CGI series, which makes the movie a waste of time for viewers who have watched the CGI series and can easily skipped as a result of the film being extremely generic and overall nothing special.
- The voice acting tends to be very hit-or-miss just like the CGI series itself, with Sam being the worst example due to some of his voice lines being generally awful that makes Steven Kynman sound like he's completely wasting his own performance talent thanks to how badly written the dialogue is and the way how he says it can come off as rather forced and rushed, especially when he tends to say rather complicated words that he has to say such as "Forest Firt" which is when Sam's voice takes a dip in quality mainly thanks to the awkward delivery of the line and Steven Kynman's bad performance as mentioned above.
- The ending is absolutely horrendous: When the fire brigade find out that Norman is the culprit, he faces barely any repercussions for nearly destroying his own town, as the only punishment he gets is not getting his badge and...that's all we see! And besides that, it's also the cliché "everyone dances" ending, which has already been done multiple times in the series. Realistically, Norman should of either been permanently exiled from Pontypandy, or sent to Juvie for what he did, but for some reason, the fire brigade didn't do that.
Good Qualities
- Everyone (except Norman) is likable in this movie.
- In concept the idea of the fire brigade having to fight a forest fire is pretty interesting, but it was executed rather poorly.
- Even if the subplot of Elvis was pretty pointless, it was nice to see Elvis act better for once, as he even saved Sam from a burning tree branch about to fall on him in on scene, which was a very selfless and heroic thing for him to do.
- For once, the CGI series teaches some good morals, including working together as a team.
- As mentioned earlier, even if Derek should have told Norman how dangerous this was, he at least was more innocent than Norman, and his softer punishment of not getting his badge does seem ok (though still, he could have prevented this fire in the first place).
Reception
Fireman Sam: The Great Fire Of Pontypandy received mixed to negative reviews from fans of the series, though like all modern Fireman Sam fans, parents and some children did enjoy it, for it's morals on at least making sure things are obeyed and why we must collaborate. But from them, it was still kind of mixed all together. Currently, the movie has a 5.4/10 on IMDb.