User Reviews

"Das fliegende Klassenzimmer" is a German movie from 1973 that runs for approximately 1.5 hours. There are other versions of this story from the 1950s (even if they changed quite a bit in this 1970s film) and a more recent one from the 21st century and I personally found all three of them pretty underwhelming. I guess it may be just Kästner's story not appealing to me at all. This one we have here will soon have its 50th anniversary and it was made by Seitz and Jacobs, two filmmakers who were among the most known when it came to German-language films back then. But this does not mean that all their works were really impressive or so, especially Jacobs sadly has a few stinkers in his body of work and this one here is certainly also not among his memorable movies. I am glad it was relatively short. The only pretty decent aspect in here is Joachim Blacky Fuchsberger's portrayal. He is a complete scene stealer whenever he is on screen, but admittedly this is not that big of a challenge either as he is mostly sharing the screen with kids and even the grown-ups are maybe half-his age and far from half his experience. Fuchsberger was in his mid-40s when he made this one and is already quite a silver fox the way we remember him today. Without him, this movie would certainly still have been worse. The frame with the scenes on the airplane early on and at the very ending isn't bad, but even there the film is not half as successful in terms of emotion as it tries to be. And same can be said about the comedy. the kids' interactions are really uninteresting and some of their quotes are pretty cringeworthy in terms of how the writer attempted to let them talk kids-friend so that this would not get a PG-13 or so and when they are speaking and insulting each other, it's pretty embarrassing too watch, or I should maybe say to listen to. Anyway, overall, the story with the two rivaling groups of children is nothing that is good enough to carry a film of 90 minutes run time and the injury towards the end is one of the desperate shots at making this also a somewhat relevant film in terms of drama, also with Fuchsberger's comment on the parallel between "Unfall" and "Unglück". Overall, I cannot say I enjoyed this color film at all. Thumbs-down from me. Not recommended.