A solid movie with magic sprinkled in for the 7 to 10 audience, plus an added coat of slapstick and cringe jokes. If Rowling sued for infringement on her Potter books, i am not 100% sure she would lose that case.
This is an adaptation of one of Wolfgang Hohlbein books, and there is four others about this world alone, as he have written over 200 fantasy books, i am happy his books finally end up as movies, but instead of wasting so much time on quirky humor and cringe moment, this movie had been better by chisel out more of the world they live in.
We see very little of the side characters, and the school in general. They make a huge deal of the main characters different weaknesses and how they have to overcome them, when they all can get rid of them at the nearest place that sell medicine, for cheap, btw, as this is in Europe.
In the end it is hard to figure out what they wanted the movie to be, to few jokes to be a comedy, not enough happening for it to be action, no romance or development of feelings for a family movie, a couple of riddles is also not enough to make it a mystery movie - in the end, it is ( perhaps due to low budget ?) a movie where some stuff happens. Even the big finale is kind of , meh.
If you babysit children age 5 - 10, this is perfect to make them sit still for 90 minutes, the rest of us kan skip it without thinking we have missed something.