A Cidade das Crianças

LES ENFANTS DE TIMPELBACH is a fantasy that offers an interesting premise; what would happen if children were so badly behaved that their parents decided to abandon them to their own devices? The film explores how the children adapt - or do not adapt - to their changed surroundings. It's a difficult task; they now have to undertake all those chores such as cooking, cleaning and tidying up, that hitherto they have always taken for granted. The film has its darker elements; there is an internecine conflict between the children strongly reminiscent of Golding's LORD OF THE FLIES. But the film ends good-heartedly with everyone restored and differences overcome. Gérard Depardieu and Carole Bouquet enjoy themselves with a couple of lip-smackingly memorably performances, but the real stars of the film are the children themselves, a marvelous ensemble who seem totally at ease in front of the camera, giving the lie to the old adage that no one should dare to act with animals and children.

How could anybody raise any money for this. Marketed as a Harry Potter/Jeunet ripoff, that piece of garbage goes out of its way to steal from any source of successful and/or creative popular material, only doing it wrong in an unimaginative, exploitative attempt to cash on people's (and especially children's) stupidity.

Nobody is spared, Grinn, J.K.Rowling, Del Toro, Burton, S.King, W.Golding... and a copious amount of French references, with Goscigny and Jeunet being the most obvious.

Modern and politically correct winks are included of course, the single cool and integrated black kid shows up when needed, pop culture references, and so on.

Any attempt at originality is ill-advised, if not completely, utterly sick.

CGI is everywhere it shouldn't be. Many visuals are good, but many times unnecessary CGI elements are shouting "look at me ! I'm a process" on the screen. Like a phony print on a building, things like that.

Needless to say, any decent performance (by the kids) gets drowned with the boat.

The whole mess feels like a cheap, unlicensed, toxic copy of a plastic smurf village set.

This is a cute children's film with fleshed-out characters. A little on the absurd side, but that's to be expected. Overall, it doesn't seem to really get any point across; it just tells a story. The parents seem to get in more trouble than the kids... and the kids seem to fare fairly well on their own (at times). So what's the moral story here? Not exactly sure. But it was fun to watch, well-filmed, well-acted, and enjoyable enough if one is in the right mood.

For those who hated it... don't watch kid's films Duh. ; )