My daughter, who was eleven years old at the time, enjoyed the film, and she was surely in the target group.
As an adult, I enjoyed the repetition of many of the sentences spoken to Andrew, who could only speak a very limited number of words in German, in German and in bad English of the sort that many Germans speak. I also enjoyed the dialects from the North of Germany, fitting in with the location of Schleswig-Holstein. The information about the local Geography was also interesting, and fitted in the detective plot rather well.
The young actors tended to take every event in its course without showing much surprise, as 14-year-olds often tend to do. However, a bit more emotion would have helped underline the dramatic effect. The family characters were realistic and entertaining, and the baddie was over-characterised just sufficiently for the target age group.
I felt that the plot was not quite fully enough explained for a detective story, but there were only quite minor details left open, and it seemed to be sufficiently well done for my daughter. I also felt that the fantasy element was rather overdone, and that the film might have been better off without it, but again this was an element which added to my daughter's enjoyment of the film.
On the whole, the film was quite entertaining and educative.
As an adult, I enjoyed the repetition of many of the sentences spoken to Andrew, who could only speak a very limited number of words in German, in German and in bad English of the sort that many Germans speak. I also enjoyed the dialects from the North of Germany, fitting in with the location of Schleswig-Holstein. The information about the local Geography was also interesting, and fitted in the detective plot rather well.
The young actors tended to take every event in its course without showing much surprise, as 14-year-olds often tend to do. However, a bit more emotion would have helped underline the dramatic effect. The family characters were realistic and entertaining, and the baddie was over-characterised just sufficiently for the target age group.
I felt that the plot was not quite fully enough explained for a detective story, but there were only quite minor details left open, and it seemed to be sufficiently well done for my daughter. I also felt that the fantasy element was rather overdone, and that the film might have been better off without it, but again this was an element which added to my daughter's enjoyment of the film.
On the whole, the film was quite entertaining and educative.