Der Agent mit den magischen Kräften

After a dramatic kidnapping, precocious teen, Alex Brown's (Paul Nolan) singular shapeshifting ability is startlingly revealed to him by charismatic, 360 yr old Romanian gypsy Janos (Teodor Danetti). This unprecedented physical talent for metamorphosis proves happily fortuitous, since Alex would have enormous trouble rescuing his missing spy parents without it! This bold, madly incongruous admixture of Spy Kids & Manimal, while aggressively ludicrous, is certainly not without some bizarro appeal to the more forgiving psychotronic B-Movie fans! If you can fully accept Shapeshifter's playful lack of credibility, one might then be able to more fully appreciate this gallopingly goofy spy/shapeshifting fantasy! Shot in picturesque Bucharest, the film is often visually appealing, diffusing the clunky dynamics of its rather tiresome Cold War plot. This kooky caper is remarkably well acted, and the gifted actors play it relatively straight, which ultimately works greatly to Shapeshifter's advantage. This fabulously freaky, far-flung Full Moon fantasy proved to be more righteous than I thought it would be, and the Pantomime-nasty Cyberwitch (Catherine Blythe) needs her very own Full Moon franchise!

Another so bad it's good film. The added chaos and absolute randomness makes for a pretty entertaining flick. The acting in this movie makes 'the room' look Oscar worthy and makes for some good laughs.

I don't know where to begin. This film is RIDICULOUS. I give it a 10/10 for the reason that I have never seen a more ridiculous movie. Shapeshifter would be great to incorporate into a beer drinking game with friends. Most people would turn this off within the first 2 minutes, but when you're someone like me who spends the entire daylight of Saturday recovering from the prior evening's drunken rampage, and something that seems thoroughly wasteful presents itself to you, you take hold of it for all it's worth (long sentence, huh?). This movie was truly hilarious (although it doesn't intend to be at all). I have the feeling that it was based on a dream some 9-year-old had after a night of eating peanut butter and cheese whiz. Then, the 9-year-old told the dream to his dad (who is a film producer) and, since the film producer had nothing better to do, gives into the kid and does it (which is the final blow necessary in thoroughly destroying his career). I would LOVE to own this movie on DVD with extensive commentary (and deleted footage) so that someone involved in this undertaking can explain to me what they were thinking.

If you are an impatient person with a busy life, then you will definitely NOT want to spend any money or time on this film. However, if you're a goofy bum like me, this movie will make your day. ENJOY!.

The mix of magic and technology was not handled nearly as well as I anticipated. The ability of the main character to shapeshift into any creature just by seeing a picture of it.

Later in the movie the title character was able to 'dissolve' into data and go fight a 'cyberwitch'. This ability was never completely explained as to how this is possible.

For pre-teens, these are probably minor points that many would not catch.

Alex (Paul Nolan) belongs to a family of parents being ex-spies for the CIA. However, a nasty evil leader of an East European country with solicited help from a witch (Catherine Blythe) decides to capture them and squeeze out some info. Naturally, it is up to their son to rescue them. Only this is a big kid older than most teenyboppers are.

While he is searching for his parents, he stays in a hostel. There is a coming-of-age cutie (Emmanuelle Vaugier) and an old dude that found a magical, digital rock as a kid assist him. Alex soon conveniently learns he can shapeshift.

Can his shifty shapes and his cutie friend help him extricate his parents?

What is the shifty witch really up to?

Will he keep his new pet rock and/or the cutie?

I know this is a pilot for a kid's series (probably to replace Alex Mac) but how dumb do you think kids are? Do not answer that. Believe me, kids would barf if you tried to feed them this pseudoscience, quasi-mystical (explicatory deleted.)

Aside from this the acting, what acting? Well, where there should have been acting, they use fake Romanian accents. The witch looks like the cousin to the woman who narrates "Mystery Science Theater 3000."

The props are just junk leftover from "Lost in Space" (the TV series). The story has no cohesion. They must be banking on the viewer having attention deficit disorder. Once again, we have a story where the kid is much cleverer than his catatonic parents are.