User Reviews

When I say "Family picture" I mean it in the Ralph Bakshi sense- there's a scene where Paul is in the bathroom and he's stark staring, full-frontal naked. That aside, this is a really good family picture. Young Paul moves into a new apartment with his mother while being stalked by a scary old witch. While at the apartment, he meets a girl named Anna there. She teases him, they fight and the witch captures them both in an elevator and sends them into her world, a barren fantasy land filled with garbage. The witch becomes kind of a figure of fun later on but at the beginning she is terrifying, and gives the opening scenes a sense of dread. However, she's still fun to watch throughout. The kids are really well written. They're weird, they're awkward. they fight, they bicker and they look out for each other. Anna saves Paul, Paul saves Anna, and they become very close friends. Joachim Kaps, known then for 'Brummkreisel', provides comic relief as a talking alarm clock, and a knight named Friedhelm (Hajo Müller) becomes a guardian to the children while looking for revenge for the blinding of his horse. Unlike fantasy films today it doesn't need a lot to just be a fantasy landscape. It's a fairly surreal one in line with one from 'Labyrinth' or 'The Dark Crystal'. Or 'Sherlock Holmes and the Seven Dwarfs', a miniseries made a year later that also starred Joachim Kaps. The acting is good, the writing is good. The music is good, if a little cheesy at times. The alarm clock is rather useless but for the most part not particularly annoying. The final battle between the children and the witch is strange and fascinating. The film does what a lot of fantasy films did at the time while feeling fresh and original. It works great as a fantasy coming-of-age movie.