O Senhor dos Ladrões

Sometimes you just want to enjoy a movie and overlook some minor imperfections. You judge it by how you feel when the movie ends. A movie that the whole family can enjoy, sans profanity, nudity, complex themes or juxtaposed subplots.

Great music, a great story and well executed direction. This is one movie that will not disappoint you as long as you understand that it is a children's' movie with simple and easily understood dialog and story line. Surprisingly, the adults equally enjoyed the production.

The characters are very convincing and the script is believable. Overall a very positive experience.

I just want to say that I adore The Thief Lord book and when I found out they made a movie from it, I almost fainted with joy. The story's about little Bo and his older brother Prosper. Their mother died and they are placed under the care of their Aunt Esther and her husband. Aunt Esther only wants Bo because of his angel face and plans to place Prosper in a boarding school (it's an orphanage in the movie). The siblings refuses to be separated and runs away to Venice. There they meet Scipio (aka Thief Lord) and he offers them Stella, an old rundown theatre, as a home. There they meet other orphans like them: Hornet, Riccio, and Mosca.

Bo and Prosper's aunt and uncle goes to Venice and hires a detective named Victor to find them, because they knew how much the boys love Venice, from the stories their mother told them. There's a souvenir shop owner by the name of Barbarosso and the orphans sell the treasures that Scipio steals to him. Barbarosso has a costumer that wants something precious stolen and the Thief Lord accepts the job. It's a wooden wing that belongs to the merry-go-around of the Merciful Sisters, claimed to do magical wonders. If I continue, I'll spoil the delightful surprises.

After seeing it, I was disappointed. What happened to the characters? Where's the sparkle? The characters seem shallow comparing to the ones in the book. The movie really did stick to the plot of the book but it seems they were so obsessed in keeping the story line just right that they forgot the characters. Plus, the English accent was so thick that I had a hard time understanding what they were saying.

There are wonderful scenes in the movie that really shone forth. I love how Bo and Prosper met Scipio, the camera following him crawling on rooftops. The awesome escape the gang made after Victor found them in the Square. Victor and his mustache collection that he keeps inside his jacket. The beautiful mask shop.

Maybe I'm just too faithful to the book. This movie will be great for those people who haven't read it yet.

The Thief Lord was released in my country a couple of months ago and for some reason this movie almost immediately caught my attention. A German family adventure/fantasy movie with English language and with English actors – all of that seemed quite unusual and therefore interesting to me. At the same time I never heard of Cornelia Funke's novel of the same name so I didn't know exactly what to expect from the movie.

I watched Thief Lord today and actually I liked it. It was really fascinating to see something fresh and different from typical and often annoying Hollywood family stuff. For young ones Thief Lord is an enjoyable family adventure with talented young cast against the background of one of the most beautiful cities in the whole world, Venice. For grown-ups besides that it's a story of bitter loneliness and sometimes misunderstanding which unite most of the characters. Two brothers, fifteen years old Prosper and much younger Bo, after death of their parents are separated. The younger goes to the old childless relatives and Prosper has been sent to an orphanage. But brothers can't live without each other and for six years old Bo Prosper is the only person who cares about him and loves him so much. Desperate, they run away. They have nowhere to go in the whole world and they are heading to Venice, the city that their mother loved so much. But the city is not welcome to runaways with no money and only unexpected help of a mysterious boy, who called himself Thief Lord and saves them from more troubles. Bo and Prosper join him and his team of orphans who find a refuge in a deserted movie theater. Soon our heroes learn that ancient city is full of surprises and what's is more that some strange magical things can happen there. They become involved into rather unexpected events and lives of different characters collide in Venice. We meet a lonely wife and husband, who also heading to Venice, trying to find a runaway child, who was merely a way to suppress their own loneliness, a lonely detective, who was hired to find Bo and some other characters. However, finally for many of our heroes resolution salvation of their personal problems will come in a rather unexpected way for each other.

But the loneliest and most suffering from that is mysterious Thief Lord himself who is trying to keep his secrets inside of him. This key character is playing by Rollo Weeks, who looks very good in his rather complicated part. Both Aaron Johnson (Prosper) and Jasper Harris also left very positive impression from their acting, self-reliance and naturalness. Despite rather short running time of the movie the development of most main characters is not bad. We know enough about them to feel sympathy or antipathy to them and we are not indifferent to them, which is very important for such a story. The acting among adult cast was also not bad with most memorable and likable performance from Jim Carter as Victor.

Thief Lord in the beginning the movie is fast paced and probably a little too short but mostly it's exciting well-filmed film with interesting and original story. The soundtrack one it's own looked very good and it's a very good addition to visual part even if sometimes the music is abstracted from what we saw on screen. And let me to say that visuals for such low-budgeted production were also not too bad. If you are looking for a good non-American family adventure film on English language as an alternative for Hollywood production featuring talented cast, probably you would be unable to find better choice than Thief Lord. Also it's worth to notice that the movie mostly successfully avoids typical and clichéd for American family films crude humor and language.

I know possibly I'm too generous and surely Thief Lord is not a flawless masterpiece but I rated it 9 out of 10. Unfortunately such enjoyable and beautifully shot family movies so rarely appear in our movie theaters or video stores.

And the last one thing that I almost forgot to mention. The title song "Orphan skies" is pretty cool and I liked it very much.

Cornelia Funke's novel has been turned into a very good "family" film. How I hate to use that term but unfortunately its true. This is the story of a couple of orphans who high tail it to Venice in search of the magic that their mother always spoke about. Their they fall in with the "Thief Lord" and his band of orphans who steal in order to survive.

This is a really good movie. I really do like it a great deal. The film is well acted by all concerned. It has great effects and is extremely well made in pretty much every area. And that is what was wrong with the film, it looks too good. Everything is picture perfect and neat. I don't think I've ever seen a film where Venice ever looked this neat and clean. It takes the film out of being very real to being a a bit of lets put on a show. Its a grand and very enjoyable show, but its a show who's technical excellence keeps you at arms distance. Maybe its just a bit of disappointment on my part, I wanted to fall into this film and enjoy it from on the inside, instead I was forced to see it through a looking glass of picture perfect perfection.

Still see this movie. If you have kids sit them down and show them this movie, it will keep everyone entertained. Its a film that people should be seeing and talking about since its too good to have get lost and disappear.

7.5 out of 10.

After finishing reading the book, I heard about the movie coming out in 2006. Of course I didn't expect much, only because books being turned into movies turn out bad. But i have say, this movie was probably the best movie i have seen in many years. This movie just blew me, and not only me, but my family away. The film was amazingly detailed and explained the character very well. The effects for this movie were just magical. This film isn't the blockbuster of the year, but this movie did have amazing acting, the effects were really well done for a low-budget movie. And, the most important, it did stay very true to the book and left very little out. Looking back on some book/movies, they leave a lot out and some of the movies don't turn out that great for some people. But this movie left out very little, and a lot of people will be very pleased. The movie overall will get a 10/10 because Cornelia Funke is just an extremely amazing writer, and the movie was just so magical and exciting, all people of any age will love it. And don't forget to catch Cornelia's soon to be made into a movie, Inkheart.