Shandar - Das Geheimnis der verborgenen Stadt

Cheap special effects, a dumb script, terrible acting, anonymous actors - what more can I say? The kids liked this, but only the younger ones. The basic concept of this is good: a pair of kids find a miniaturized alien city and dislodge its power supply meaning that the city will soon grow to its correct size, with cataclysmic results. Can the kids find the lost power source in time? Complicating matters, there are a group of sinister aliens chasing them. These nasty aliens want the tiny city for their own nefarious purposes. Fortunately for the kids, these aliens seem to be unable to run and so the kids have that advantage. Also, all the adults in this seem to be fairly dumb, so that's another plus for the kids. Everyone seems to be shouting at one another which, I guess, is in lieu of being able to act. Like I said, there is an interesting idea at the heart of this and also the potential for a good movie. Unfortunately, this misses the mark by a mile. OK for undemanding kids. Parental guidance not required - save yourself the pain.

Hmmm....let's see, this is by director Ted Nicolaou ("Subspecies"), so that gives it a few points. And if you are a fan of the CBS daytime soap-opera "The Bold & The Beautiful", it also stars Agnes Bruckner (who played Bridget Forrester), so that jacks it up a couple more points. Bottom line, if you got kids who love PG-rated sci-fi flicks, or if you're an adult who likes the two above reasons, I'd recommend a look. But otherwise, like my summary said, it's basically a kid's flick.

Not a 10 because of it's million dollar Hollywood blockbuster actors, effects, etc. But because my kids really loved this movie. My 7-10 year old's especially were on the edge of their seats by the end of the movie. Yes, as a grown up we can see that this is cheap, cheesy, and made over a decade ago but generally kids don't care about that stuff. And my kids certainly didn't mind. For me the BEST thing about this movie was that it was CLEAN!!! If we have to watch cheap unrated movies filmed in eastern Europe to find clean and wholesome for our children, then so be it. I give this movie a 10 because we all had a great movie night and I didn't come away thinking, "now how am I going to explain this to my kids?"

A good kids entry that adults can enjoy to a point also.

Clean overall fantasy / sci-fi entry from Moonbeam.

Is it cheaper and a bit contrived at times? Absolutely, but it's paced pretty darn well for this type of film, really no boring or slow points.

The neat feature of the bad guys constantly changing their looks to stay after the kids without being discovered as aliens / outsiders is a pretty nice plot point and helps keep the story moving and fun.

It's maybe a bit contrived or cleans up nicely at the end, but it's not overly annoying I didn't think.

The two kids as the main leads should keep younger viewers interested and engaged and with the adult aliens chasing them should interest older audiences well enough.

The masks that make the aliens up as the aliens are actually recycled from Oblivion, a Full Moon series that spans two movies and was generally pretty well received.

It was a bit interesting also, seeing the Romanian backdrops and vehicles, factory they go into used in the movie, at least I thought it was fun to see.

I got this with two other Moonbeam movies in a pack for about $10 with shipping. Goobers and Night at the Magic Museum. This movie was definitely a couple steps above those two kids-oriented movies.

i have seen this movie today and i liked it, but i think it's more for kids. the girl Agnes Bruckner can make cool faces but personally i think she overuses this feature of herself sometimes. this might of course be a fault of the director. anyway nice to see, i enjoyed it very much. thanks for this movie.