"Der 7bte Zwerg" is loosely connected to the "Snow White" "and Sleeping Beauty" fairy tales. It follows two live action movies with some of Germany's comedy elite (German comedy legend Otto Waalkes and 6 others) playing the seven dwarfs. While I actually kinda enjoyed these two films, unfortunately this animated movie here did not do too much for me. The animation is solid and it was a nice idea to make the dwarfs look like the actors from the previous 2 films, especially as these were also back to lend them their voices again. However, the story just felt too weak for me overall. The writing came (among others, including prolific actor (and also one of the dwarfs) Boris Aljinovic who directed his very first movie here) from Bernd Eilert again, who was also in charge of writing the two live action movies. One of the emotional highlights was probably when the dwarfs became friends with the depressive dragon, but it did not impact me at all, which makes me come to the conclusion that this is really one for smaller children. I would say that the side plots and minor references were frequently more interesting and fun to watch than the core story. I enjoyed seeing all the fairytale references early on at the 18th birthday party or how they displayed Snow White and Sleeping Beauty as sort of BFFs in a modern way.
The trip to the evil queen and everything they went through there (and also the way they returned and came out right at the castle) seemed randomly rushed in and they could have done so much more than that quality-wise. Female rock singer Nina Hagen voices the evil queen (she also appeared in the other dwarf films already), but while her voice has huge recognition value and fits evil characters nicely, it always seems the same to me. Sadly, I cannot really recommend this movie. However, you should actually watch the live action dwarf movies first and then decide for yourself, if you are interested in this one as well. Maybe you can appreciate it more than I did. In general, I would suggest watching one of the many German children's book live action adaptations that come out these days. Many of them are real quality, but for some reason German animation movies are still several steps behind in terms of quality.
The trip to the evil queen and everything they went through there (and also the way they returned and came out right at the castle) seemed randomly rushed in and they could have done so much more than that quality-wise. Female rock singer Nina Hagen voices the evil queen (she also appeared in the other dwarf films already), but while her voice has huge recognition value and fits evil characters nicely, it always seems the same to me. Sadly, I cannot really recommend this movie. However, you should actually watch the live action dwarf movies first and then decide for yourself, if you are interested in this one as well. Maybe you can appreciate it more than I did. In general, I would suggest watching one of the many German children's book live action adaptations that come out these days. Many of them are real quality, but for some reason German animation movies are still several steps behind in terms of quality.