"Papa Moll" is a Swiss 90-minute movie from 2017 that has achieved more awards recognition than you'd expect for a kids movie from that country. Director and one of the writers is Manuel Flurin Hendry. His co-writers have probably more known projects in their bodies of work than he does. The only known cast member to me is Stefan Kurt who plays the title character and apparently this title character is now unknown at all in Switzerland the way he is here in Germany, apparently appears in q few children's books and radio plays. And as children's books adaptations have been very common in the German-speaking countries for over a decade, it's not surprising they turned this into a movie. I don't know how close the film is to one or several books, but the outcome was mostly disappointing. The film struggles with weak acting from basically all child actors in here to be honest. Hardly anybody from the kids is hitting any right marks and also there are far too many kids characters in here and several have almost no story to them at all and nobody would have missed them if they had been left out I think. The grown-up actors are a bit better, Kurt is fine, the one who plays his boss is pretty good actually and despite being over-the-top he is entertaining and memorable. But even if the grown-ups are better, the story is a huge mess. it is as absurd as uninteresting most of the time. The shot at comedy is also not a success by any means in my opinion. There are so many scenes and moments that feel really for the sake of creating comedy, but not fitting in with the plot or movie at all, at times almost like a sketch show. The dog from the circus is the best example I think. It is even referenced in the long version of the German title, but it is so so out of place and its story (surrounding the kids) never gains steam at all, which is definitely a negative deal breaker as it is at the very core of the film. The chocolate candy parts are slightly better, but also not exactly good most of the time. There are parts that don't make sense even, like the old boss from the chocolate company who appears at the very end and when we see him on that old black-and-white video early on, he looks basically the same age as he does at the very end. So I think while there are many German kids films that have really decent qualoty, this is not one of them unfortunately. By the way the original version here is in Swiss German, which is very difficult to understand for Germans even, so make sure you get a good dub perhaps. Finally, to sum it all up, I would like to say that I think going for an animated movie may have been the better choice. I don't know if they really intend to continue this franchise and mayke a second or even third Papa Moll movie at some point, but judging from the quality of this first film here, I have little interest to check that one out, especially if they don't recast the child actors. It's not a complete failure, but far away from a success. The very forced happy ending with the mother randomly reappearing again is a mess too. Thumbs down. Watch something else instead.
