Lengthy earlier than she was a film star, a teenage Nicole Kidman appeared within the early-’80s motion comedy “BMX Bandits,” a rowdy Australian kidpic filled with bicycle stunts and Scooby-Doo crime-stopping shenanigans. It’s too early to say whether or not any of the cute younger leads in “Riddle of Hearth” will go on to have profitable performing careers. Nonetheless, it’s amusing to assume that twenty years into the twenty first century, writer-director Weston Razooli has taken inspiration from such questionable classics, together with classic live-action Disney fare — like “Escape from Witch Mountain” and the Herbie films, which the studio bought in puffy white VHS instances — for his personal retro-spirited debut.

Spun from equal elements creativeness and nostalgia, “Riddle of Hearth” comes as shut as any movie since “Spy Youngsters” or “Kisses” to mirroring the sort of cinematic adventures we made in our heads as children (in case you’re studying this and don’t know Lance Daly’s now-15-year-old Irish charmer, search it out). Razooli remembers the way it feels to blaze down dust paths or traipse off into the woods looking for journey, spying on suspicious-looking strangers and enhancing no matter it appeared like these grown-ups have been doing into nefarious schemes — plots which solely “meddling children” felt geared up to resolve.

Reverse-engineered from such recollections and shot on 16mm Kodak movie — with radioactive-yellow wildflowers and foliage so inexperienced it’s possible you’ll attain to your allergy treatment — the challenge makes up in persona what it lacks in price range. “Riddle of Hearth” opens with an invite from a younger faery named Petal Hollyhock (Lorelei Olivia Mote), who sits by a stream and spouts some Dungeons & Dragons-sounding gibberish whereas flute music performs on the soundtrack. “We’ll have ourselves an outin’,” the woman suggests, whisking audiences to Ribbon, Wyoming (truly Utah), the place the widescreen sight of a reddish A-frame cabin surrounded by forest suggests a folksy American fairytale.

Straight out of the gate, three dirt-bike-riding children in hand-knitted ski masks break right into a warehouse and steal a coveted online game console, however their mom (Danielle Hoetmer), laid up in mattress at some stage in the film, refuses to unlock the tv set except they spend some high quality time outdoor. Again within the ’80s, that was a well-recognized chorus, particularly amongst adults cautious of the impact that digital units may have on growing younger minds. Today, neighbors have been recognized to report mother and father whose youngsters go unsupervised in their very own entrance yards for any size of time. God forbid they need to witness what mischief this trio has in retailer (no worse than “The Goonies” or “The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking,” thoughts you).

Mother asks her sons Hazel (Charlie Stover) and Jodie (Skyler Peters), together with tomboy good friend Alice (Phoebe Ferro), to fetch her a blueberry pie from the bakery on the town — a easy request which the kids select to interpret like an epic quest. Discovering the bakery to be out of inventory, they resolve to bake the pie themselves, which they will’t do with out one key ingredient: a speckled egg. Alas, they attain the grocery retailer a second too late, simply in time to see a burly cowboy named John Redrye (Charles Halford) take the final dozen. When asking properly doesn’t work, they resolve to comply with this “woodsy bastard” house and steal an egg from him there.

None of this would appear enough to carry an grownup viewer’s consideration for lengthy, and but, the entire enterprise feels a lot like play — not only for the characters, however for audiences too — that we roll together with every new growth. When the youngsters disguise beneath blankets behind John’s tricked out pickup truck, successfully hitching a experience to a camp out with a coven of witches, we’re much less involved for his or her security than curious to see the place the story will go subsequent. There behind the truck, the trio uncover Petal, the narrator and mischievous daughter of head witch Anna-Freya Hollyhock (Lio Tipton).

It’s round this time that the youngsters uncover the adults’ true agenda on the market within the woods, and the comparatively harmless antics take a extra sinister flip. Armed with shiny chrome paintball weapons and iPhones that double as high-tech binoculars, these resourceful children maintain their very own. Nonetheless, two hours is much too lengthy for such a lark. As an alternative of wrapping up poignantly, à la “Florida Challenge,” this riddle finally unravels. Their seek for the speckled egg in all probability ought to have ended round sunset, permitting some larger level to disclose itself. Aside from Tipton and Halford, the performing feels pretty amateurish all through, with the form of stilted line readings simply forgiven from youngster actors or John Waters extras (in a cute contact, Jodie’s endearingly unintelligible dialogue is accompanied by subtitles). It ought to all deliver again fond recollections for many who grew up with entry to the good outdoor, or for his or her big-city counterparts raised in entrance of a VCR.