This movie is the perfect example of what's wrong with german cinema. I've read all the Sams books with my son so far, and they're great. Also, the author Paul Maar seems to be a fantastic person who understands children.
However, the movie doesn't do justice to the books. But before someone says, Most of the time the movie does not make sense at all. "It's for children. It doesn't have to make sense," I must say: Please stop insulting children's intelligence. Children also like stories that make sense, even fantasy storyies. Stories in a fantasy world must make sense, and you can't just give up on everything that makes a good story. I understand that characters may need adjustments for a film, but the fact that they all have to be so absolutely negative shocked me. Everyone in the film is mean. I have nothing against mean characters in a movie, but if I'm supposed to somehow like the Sams or Mr. Taschenbier and care about their well-being, then I shouldn't be presented with such unpleasant characters. Everyone seems to act from completely base motives or sometimes even some actions happen for no reason at all. Many actions that made sense in the book are just done here because they also occur in the book. But there's no explanation given for many actions. It annoys me greatly to see this because the books provide a great underlying story for a fantastic film. But someone didn't bother with storytelling I guess.
But what annoys me the most are the scenes that the filmmakers added, which contribute absolutely nothing to the story or character development. Besides, most of them just aren't good (except the idea of the umbrella factory)
But there is also something that I truly enjoyed and loved in this movie. All scenes with Frau Rotkohl and Herr Mon. They seem like they're from a completely different film. Not only both actors (Eva Mattes & Armin Rohde) are great, also the staging is different. Or at least it feels different. Only for that (and for my son of course) I did not regret watching the movie.
The strange thing is that in the book, Mrs. Rotkohl is portrayed as a quite annoying and mean person who changes over time and becomes a nice woman. In the film, people are just mean to her (like when the Sams splashes water on her face for no reason), and then she complains. Rightly so. There is no character setup for her. She´s just a person that reacts to people being mean to her. But still she´s amazing.
The film really feels like, "It's just for kids anyway, and kids aren't smart, so we don't need to bother with storytelling." I read the books for the first time this year in my life. With my son. I didn't know them before. And then my son naturally wanted to watch the movie. We did. He found it quite funny (even though he asked, "How long untill the end?" in the middle). But he was more impressed by other children's movies that respect a good story and don't underestimate children's intelligence.
After the movie, we watched the extras on the BluRay, and in one extra, the Sams is interviewed. Not the actress, but the actress in her role as the Sams. It's supposed to be funny, but when she (as the Sams) started to talk about Pokemon and why kids shouldn´t watch Pokemon or play it, but instead they should watch the sams, I got even more annoyed. If you have to put something down to promote yourself, then something is seriously wrong. Regardless of the fact that my family and I are huge Pokémon fans. We're also huge Sams fans (not the film). You just don't do that and it´s really sad that they felt they have to to that.
I could write all day about why I don't like the movie. I don't know who was responsible for it and apologize to the filmmakers and Paul Maar, who may have wanted to make a good movie out of it and maybe their hands were tied due to the usual reasons in the German film business.
