Wiplala, le lutin enchanteur

What a delightful twist on the classic children's books by Annie M. G. Schmidt! I loved these books growing up, and now my daughter has also fallen in love with them. We both thoroughly enjoyed the movie adaptation too.

While the movie doesn't stick strictly to the original story line (it's set in the present day), I appreciate how it maintains a lively pace and captures the essence of the books while adding a fresh layer on top of it. It strikes a wonderful balance between keeping the excitement alive and weaving in the beloved themes from Schmidt's stories. Perfect family movie in my opinion.

9 year old Johannes finds a leprechaun but nobody believes him. In an emergency, the magical Wiplala, not a leprechaun, shrinks the whole family but can't quite turn them back.

It's always fun to play with giant props. I wish the movie does more of it. I would also change Wiplala. The character needs to be more magical. The guy is in his twenties and he's not fun enough. He should either be a kid or be played by someone like Robin Williams. The father is rather annoying although that's his job. Maybe he shouldn't get shrunk and has to search for his kids. That way, his negativity can be minimized and separated from the main group. This is almost fine but it doesn't elevate the magic of this often done premise.

Similarly to Sven I had high hopes for this film and just like him I feel that I was left disappointed. The CGI is decent for a European film, but the writing is less than impressive—to say the least. Characters are behaving irrationally and the whole plot is full of illogical twists. Why was it necessary to deviate from the book that much? Also I did not like the choice of the actor to portray Wiplala - in the book he comes across as a nerdy character and younger/slimmer than Géza Weisz is/was.

However, for someone not too familiar with the book it's an acceptable entertainment and non-Dutchies will appreciate the renowned Amsterdam landmarks featured in the film.

Not as bad as I thought it would be, was expecting to give this one about a 3/10. Fun plot, I myself have never read the book however me and 2 other friends watched it and we had a blast. I didn't like some of the poor acting however the music ("How We Belong" to be specific), the lighting, and the CGI/green screen was all quite good! I still don't understand how this is supposed to be a Christmas movie, its more or less a movie with Christmas mentioned every now and then. The actors weren't all that bad however, some of the facial expressions were pretty funny. Overall not too rubbish of a movie, its dubbing however and the closed captioning weren't all that great.

"wannabe wizard can't drive"

Rubbish film. Boring, bland and predictable. Not in the same league as the "Honey, I shrunk the kids!" movies that its thumbnail and international title rips off.