La flûte enchantée

I am a musician, I play trumpet and sing with groups, but I am not particularly a fan of opera. I knew that Mozart wrote "The Magic Flute" but other than that had no idea what the story was about. Now I know! And this movie makes that journey fun. There is a key fantasy element here and that is a movie trait I generally enjoy. Think "Pleasantville" or "The Purple Rose of Cairo."

The movie begins with a young man by his sick dad's bedside. His dad was a singer and young Tim would go to the prestigious Mozart academy in Austria, shortly after his dad passed away.

Young Jack Wolfe, with his fine features and slight build looking 15, is Tim Walker. When he shows up mid-session learns that the school is auditioning for a stage performance of Mozart's Magic Flute. He might be a candidate for the lead role of Prince Tamino.

One fateful morning at precisely 3:00AM he is transported through a magic portal to the fictional land of the characters in 'The Magic Flute.' There he is Prince Tamino and he must figure out a way to save the Princess. At 6:00AM he is back in school, only to be repeated on next days.

Already with his connection to Mozart in the 1984 movie 'Amadeus', F. Murray Abraham plays the stern head of the music school, creating a character not too different from the stern teacher in the 2000 movie 'Finding Forrester.' He is excellent in these types of roles, as he is here.

I watched it at home on BluRay from my public library. With DTS surround sound it was like being in an auditorium when the Mozart symphonic music was playing. And the video is some of the best I have seen.

All in all a very fine and entertaining take on 'The Magic Flute'. My wife skipped the first time but joined me when I re-watched it 6 weeks later.

I am not quite sure why this movie only scores 5.9 (as of today, April 2023). There maybe a few opera snobs around who think it cheapens the Mozart original, but they're wrong.

This movie should be taken for what it is: a good way of introducing opera to a younger generation who probably never hear such wonderful music otherwise.

The cast do a good job and the twin storylines, running in parallel, with the real life romance playing out while the Magic Flute story plays out in the world that Tim/Prince Tamino travels to through the magic clock.

Mozart's score is, as always, enchanting. And there's a nice cameo at the end from a rather well-known operatic tenor....

This is a straightforward movie - a framing story about our young protagonists in musical school, and the opera itself, played out simultaneously after the hero passes some magical gate every day for a few hours. The framing story seemed a bit cliché but never got the upper hand; the fantasy sequences are perfectly realised, with respect to the fairytale atmosphere of the libretto, so not too realistic but rather colourful and dreamlike.

As to the music, well, I'm not an opera gourmet; I rather liked how some of the arias were blared out with gusto and not too fine an intonation, but on the other hand, the queen's soprano really put goosebumps on my skin - it's quite an event hearing such a perfect and dramatic voice over a cinema sound system (pretty loud, too, in our case).

(I'm a sucker for choir movies, btw ... the human voice is the most beautiful of instruments!) The one thing I didn't understand about the music was the generic end-credits song, why not use Mozart again?

Overall, a hearty recommendation for all music lovers. We liked it very much, even though we're 50ish and the movie is clearly targeted at a younger audience - the school scenes, interior and exterior, are clearly inspired by Harry Potter, they even put in an Austrian railway viaduct similar to the one on the Mallaig line :)

My wife and I took my five year old daughter to go see this. I don't know much about Mozart or this particular opera but I knew there were fantasy elements and were all huge fantasy nerds. The first twenty minutes set up the main character of Tim and his relationship with his father, who was a famous singer of sorts (to what extent is never explained fully) and he gives his son a magic book. He's sent to attend the same music school as his father, one dedicated to Mozart. But soon we realize he's set to relive his fathers legacy by playing the lead in The Magic Flute. F. Murray Abraham is deviously wonderful as the strict headmaster, although he is drastically under used. Tim soon finds himself using the magic book and a magic portal behind a clock to transport himself to the world of The Magic Flute where he meets Iwan Rheon as Papagenu who absolutely steals the show. The resulting film is filled with fantastic music and visuals, including a giant snake, an evil Queen, and a daring rescue of a kidnapped princess by the unlikely heroes. The scenes at the school seemed to drag from time to time, but toward the end I was happy that they included as much of that storyline as they did because it was heartwarming at the conclusion. My 5 year old and I loved, my wife didn't like it at all unfortunately. But we will definitely be watching this again.

This movie is well done and the plot is unique. A teenage boy who attends the Mozart Academy of Music is magically transported to the world of The Magic Flute. There he actually performs in the opera. It's great to see F. Murray Abraham play the headmaster considering he played Antonio Salieri so well in the movie Amadeus. I do recommend that people see the original opera on stage to fully grasp the scope of the music and story, or as it is called the libretto in opera terms.

This movie is entertaining and puts this opera in a whole new light. It's great for Mozart fans and fans of a good love story. It introduces the magic of Mozart to the next generation.