Coconut, the Little Dragon (2014) User Reviews

I really hoped this would be better

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 10 February 2015]

It's a bit sad to see that German animation films are not very frequent and if a new one comes out, it is usually fairly weak. German live action kids movies (usually based on novels) look so much better currently. "Der kleine Drache Kokosnuss" is not an exception here sadly. It comes from the team behind "Ritter Rost", a movie which at least made the long list for German submissions to the Academy Awards this year (and probably would not have been a worse choice than the actual disastrous selection "Beloved Sisters").

Anyway, back this film. There are two kinds of dragons living here. Dragons who always want to eat and dragons who spit fire. The main character is one of the latter and the hungry dragons turn out as the villains of the story, even if one of them, a small one, is a friend of the main character. And as if this isn't already enough the central character also has to learn how to fly and really struggles with it. The animation wasn't too bad all in all, but the story just never really wowed me and I felt it dragged occasionally even if the film runs under 90 minutes. There were many kids in this movie and usually I hear them laugh a lot, but even they did not seem to find the movie too funny really. The voice acting cast is mediocre. Dustin Semmelrooge would never be known to anybody without his dad and Max von der Groeben I don't see much talent either. Kebekus and Michelsen are okay.

It looks like there will be a TV show about the little dragon Coconut this year too. I can't recommend watching the movie, but you could always catch an episode of the television series and decide afterward if you want to give the film a chance. For me, one main problem was that many characters were just there, but never really elaborated on, like the porcupine, which I still liked, or the very good schoolgirl dragon named Pineapple. It was unclear if she was a friend or foe to the main character and a solution never really came.

Abysmal

[okami_ito · 2/10 · 5 March 2015]

The poor children. That were exactly my thoughts while i was watching this with my three kids in an nearly empty theater. I really felt bad about bringing them. Not that i dragged them! It was their wish to see it. Basically because they listened to some of the audio books about the little dragon which this fiasco was based on. So we went, and i felt bad. Still i can't remember being disappointed by an animated movie this way. I mean they're not all great, but most of them deliver some eye candy or some slapstick at least. It's not that hard to be entertained if the people behind a movie like this just put a little love into it. It really isn't. But the moment the film started i was quite shocked how utterly uninspired it all was. And i mean UNINSPIRED!

First of all there was almost no work done in the backgrounds. It was like a layout for a "real" film to be made. Just a few very ugly trees, a few bald humps and that was it. It looked like a cheap video game from the nineties. All creatures involved looked like cut out of cheap rubber foam. If one payed attention to the nostrils of the dragons, they just looked like holes drilled in a wall. The movements of everybody involved gave the impression that everybody was sedated somehow. Everybody moved totally slow, and everybody moved exactly the same way (young or old).

It was incredible. As if these people fiddled around on their laptop for a few days and than the money ran out. I couldn't believe my eyes. Even felt ashamed for everybody involved in this sad excuse of a movie. The script wasn't any better at all. In the books the little dragon is a curious little creature who explores his world. It's aim is to learn or prove things. In the movie he's just a stupid brat with a flat voice. Sounds harsh, but it's the truth. The reason for this is that the scriptwriters in lack of any ambition chose to let his stupid mistakes actually be the only reasons that things happen.

Speaking of lack of ambition: these kinds of movie are supposed to be funny, don't they? Well, it's hard to find anything funny here, the idea of the team behind this about "funny" being lifeless characters acting like morons and using stupid accents. In both cases for no reason. Oh yeah, and there's farting, of course, the last refuge for the uninspired.

My children watched in silence, really trying to feel good. Still feel bad when i think about it. There are a lot of great movies for children out there. Do yourself and your kids a favor: avoid this, it's made either by cynics or idiots. I fear both.

It's something for the kids...

[marieschubardt · 9/10 · 14 August 2017]

Personally, it wasn't my cup of tea. There are many wonderful films I have thoroughly enjoyed watching with my kids, but most of those were also advertised as family films and this is a film my kids watch without me, and I think that's fine too! My two children knew the series and the books, and in their opinion the film lives up to their expectations… judging by the fact that they've seen this film approximately 100 times already… They really enjoyed the film and I recommend showing them Kokosnuss' and his friends adventures as book and audio book format, as well as on-screen!