"Emil und die Detektive" is the film adaption of a famous children's novel by Erich Kästner. In evolves around Emil, a small boy from a small town, who drives to Berlin to visit relatives over the holidays but wakes up to find all of his money stolen by a strange man on the train. Together with a gang of young boys and girls he meets on the streets of Berlin, he begins to chase down the criminal.
I really enjoy Kästner's way to tell stories and so this movie has the huge advantage of a superb plot, which makes it well watchable still today. Unfortunately, the rest of the film hasn't aged as well, everything seems rather stiff and moralic and is at some points lacking the rather cheeky humor of Kästner's stories. In its time it surely was a great production and I do value that, however you would probably produce it quite different today, which can be seen in the really good remake that was released some years ago.
All in all this is still worth a watch, especially for Kästner fans and nostalgics, however it will be hard to convince your children to sit through this black and white classic.
I really enjoy Kästner's way to tell stories and so this movie has the huge advantage of a superb plot, which makes it well watchable still today. Unfortunately, the rest of the film hasn't aged as well, everything seems rather stiff and moralic and is at some points lacking the rather cheeky humor of Kästner's stories. In its time it surely was a great production and I do value that, however you would probably produce it quite different today, which can be seen in the really good remake that was released some years ago.
All in all this is still worth a watch, especially for Kästner fans and nostalgics, however it will be hard to convince your children to sit through this black and white classic.