Die Schule der magischen Tiere

In general I am not a big fan of german movies. Especially kids movies. They mostly don't hit my nerve.

But this movie got me surprised. Most importantly. My kids (7y & 5y) love it.

The idea about having your soul animal is always good. There are a lot of books and movies out there tackling this idea.

With this movie they created a very nice twist on that idea.

My highlights:

• Animals are likeable and funny
• Songs are surprisingly catchy and well sung
• Story is more than solid

Since the movie was so good we also are now looking into the books and audiobooks. So the movie was a nice entry point for getting into this universe.

The movie started off okay, but it was obviously written for children at least 7 years younger than me. There was little to no character depth and the script was poorly written. I also hated the movies take on the Character of Ida Kronenberg. In the books she is a thoughtful, Intelligent but shy girl. With her grades she is at the top of her class. In the movie she is very extroverted and kind of mean to some classmates. There is nothing wrong with that, but in my opinion it just didn´t fit the character description in the book. In any case the books are much better than this.

In conclusion: The movie is okay, but I enjoyed part two of the series much more. Watch this movie if you read the books or don't watch it because they Interpret characters much more different, than what is actually written in the book.

I loved the books and I was very curious to watch the movie but it was very disappointing. The film has nothing of the charm of the books and the story is boring. Also I don't get why movies for a younger audience have to contain so many songs and awkward dances. They are unnecessary and destroy the rest of the very little charm sometimes in my opinion.

I recognised some mistakes in terms of content, too.

One good thing about the film are the locations they're pretty and the cast is overall okay but in all others the movie could do a lot better, the book series delivers a great base!

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Best message for kids! Such a fun adventure for my 3 & 8 year old kiddos, they loved it! The 8 year old said, " It's a good movie about a new kid finding kindness. And I loved that that the animals could talk. And the animals helped with the spying. The mean director was so mean to the janitor. " The 3 year old said," I didn't like the mean teacher. It was a nice movie with nice animals"!

They need to make more movies like this for kids with such positive messages. Lovely bits of scenery of Germany.

The kids were very talented nicely done with not too much singing and dancing to loss the kids attention to storyline.