User Reviews

"Brüderchen und Schwesterchen", which means "Little Brother and Little Sister" is a German television film from 2008, so this one is already over a decade old and it is one of those many films based on (Brothers Grimm) fairytales made by the German public service broadcasting authorities. Like most of the others, this one here runs for pretty much exactly an hour, minimally under, and the director is Wolfgang Eissler and the writer is Gabriele Kreis and these two collaborated on other projects too, even on other fairytale films. It is not uncommon that these films attract some pretty well-known actors. As almost always the title characters here are not played by big names, but child actors, but apart from them you will find Sawatzki, Ohrt, Monot Jr. and Schüle in here, even if except Sawatzki they don't have too much screen time. Monot just palys a minor character and Schüle even plays a nothing character really. Ohrt's character is kileld early on in the film, so not much screen time for him either. This act was also perhaps the most gruesome of the entire film because it turns the two title characters into orphans. Sawatzki's character is built up like this really quickly as the main antagonist and a really evil women who basically enslaves the two children before they manage to leave. Well, as for Sawatzki, she was one key reason why I did not like the movie that much. I have seen some of these fairytale films and generally I don't struggle too much if actors go over the top in these as the fantasy aspect makes it easy for them to get away with it, but as for Sawatzki she is just too much at times and certainly crossing the line where it as no longer entertaining, but just annoying. And with that I don't mean her character, but her performance. It was kinda telling that the actress who played her daughter was really better and that one is pretty much a nobody. I kept wondering if she'd swicth sides at some point by the way. She was not necessarily evil, but really just not exactly blessed by nature physically and also not particularly intellectual gently-speaking. But she didn't. As for the actors who play the two title characters. The boy stopped acting soon after this film here and leads a "normal" life now it seems, but the female child actress Odine Johne is also acting now into her grown-up years. One thing a bit unusual about this film is that her character really gets together with (in the sense of "marries") the prince almost halfway into the film, which is normally something that does not happen before the very end. But here we jave other issues to be solved of course, most of all the boy still being turned into a deer by the evil woman. And afterwards, also Schwesterchen's life is in danger. I must say though that I think this is a story that my mother read to me as a child and I somehow remembered liking it and I did not really end up liking this film too much, also how the Sawatzki's character and her kid move into the castle pretty much did not make much sense or feel realistic the way they showed it to us here. Also the whole boy-turned-into-deer story line did not make as much of an impact on me as I hoped it would. I mean it was still among the better aspects of the film, but just not as good and memorable and maybe even touching as it could have been. So overall, this is nowhere near my favorites from these new takes on fairytales and while it is not a failure, I think the negative outwighs the positive here. Don't watch. Glad it only ran for this short, it already felt too long for its own good at times.