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Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) When you hear the word "Krabat", you will probably wonder first of all what is that. If you think, it has to do with the Moroccan city, you are completely wrong. If you think it includes the German word for raven, you are much closer, but most of all the film is simply named after the film's main character played by David Kross. This movie has some of the most known younger German actors in its cast. Apart from Kross, who you may have seen in "The Reader", there is also Daniel Brühl, Robert Stadlober, Anna Thalbach, Hanno Kofler and my personal favorite Charly Hübner. I'm usually not too big on Kross, Stadlober and Brühl, but at least the latter impressed me occasionally here. I would say that this is mostly a kids movie, although a fairly dark one, but adult audiences can also have a good time watching.The main antagonist is played by Christian Redl, who is also the only older actor in the cast. He plays an evil sorcerer, but as he seemed to be a bit of a father figure to the boys for quite a while, it was initially unclear how evil he really is and I even considered for a moment that Stadlober's character my be the main villain because of Krabat's dislike for him. The movie is written and directed by Marco Kreuzpaintner. It is an adaptation from the late Otfried Preußler's (one of Germany's most famous children's book authors) novel. Kreuzpaintner already worked with a few cast members like Kofler, Stadlober or Paula Kalenberg, the female main character and love interest to Krabat. For the director it is the return back to Germany from Hollywood after making a film with Kevin Kline one year earlier. He is still fairly young, was 30 when he made this film, so we may get many more films from him and I hope they won't be worse than "Krabat".The film won a handful awards and also scored nominations at the German Film awards in the smaller categories. There really wasn't much wrong with this movie. The thing that maybe bothered me the most was the choice of the song "Allein, allein" for the soundtrack. It was a huge hit here in Germany, but I felt that it did not suit the film or the topic at all. Apart from that, it's not a good song at all in my opinion. Really bad choice. They simply should have gone for some gloomy tune without lyrics in my opinion. But back to the more positive factors: I liked how, with the introduction of Krabat's childhood friend, Krabat turned into Brühl's character and the young boy was pretty much Krabat when he freshly joined the group. The fact that the boys are the ravens was clear from the very beginning and it is a good idea although I wish it could have surprised me or they would have added more to that subplot except the ending scene with the girl choosing the correct raven. The 20th Century Fox intro with the ravens was pretty nice as well. However, I wondered what the whole leaving your body plot was about. Brühl's character and Krabat were doing it when Krabat meets his girl the first time. And what was behind the whole thing that they should not have a girlfriend? I guess it was the sorcerer's fear that he could not fight love and that he may lose all his boys just like he did at the end of the film. But one or two more scenes could have helped in my opinion. They could have cut some of the less significant scenes for that. The film runs for pretty much exactly 2 hours and they could have done without 5-10 minutes, because it is already very long, especially for children. Most German kids movies these days do not cross the 100-minute mark.Anyway, as a whole I liked this movie and finally I would also like to mention explicitly the good work with the aging makeup for Redl's and Brühl's characters. The film has some nice fairytale and fantasy elements which made sure it did not drag at all or only once or twice which is very acceptable given the runtime. Very atmospheric too. Recommended.

praagsigaar Hm. I read the book as a kid (a long time ago) and was impressed back then. So no movie could ever live up to that. I've seen it in English but would probably have preferred the German version. To late now. But anyhow. The cinematography is great, the art direction is good (a bit too much 'puppet house style' for me) and the acting is OK. The story is just like I remember it. But without the magic. I do not mean wizardry, of that there's enough. But it never really got to me. Unfortunately. It might be the art direction that does not feel real enough. It might be the acting. I do not know. I need ten lines so here is the tenth line.

Dietmar Budelsky After watching the film, I was unsure what was wrong with it. The pictures are magnificent, the acting was OK to good the score was good and the plot was there. Palpatine replacing the Gevatter was may be OK. I think the Gevatter as described in the book is really hard to transfer onto the screen.The magic was changed in a bad way as described in comments before. The landscape is changed, too. I did not like this, but one has to see the film as an own work. A "Plan 9 from outer space" like goof is the Kantorka entering the mill in the night and the journeymen leaving with her in bright daylight only minutes later. But this only explains, why the film is not a really great one and not, why it is only a film as thousands more.After rethinking what did not work, things came back to the missing year. The point which worked the least in the book is the shortage of time. Krabat is getting from the newbie to one main antagonist and the possible successor of the master within three years in a ritual death cycle lasting one year. So in the book he is able to see the rhythm of new trainee to prey only two times completely while other journeymen had an advance of at least 9 years for this and react accordingly at the end of the year. And the relationship of Krabat to the Kantorka can built up by very few meetings within year 2 and 3. So the development of Krabat himself is very fast and nearly unbelievable in the book.By omitting one year in the film, the pace goes over the edge. To explain the Krabat/Kantorka relationship, the journeymen have to stumble massively into the town life as positive figures, therefore the awful fight scene. And Krabat has to go to the town on easter himself and Juro has to catch him in the town (and reveal himself). The original scene in the book, where Juro is "accidently" burning Krabats' hand is much more appropriate but give not enough time for Krabat to physically meet the Kantorka during the rest of the film. As a result of all this, the changing of Krabat during the story is getting implausible. So is for an example to add the suicide attempt.The film is simply lacking plausibility by telling a story of breaking a cycle in too short time. You can not give the real impression of a cycle by only showing it once. An additional hour for the third year would have made the film a much better one. Even then, Pumphutt or Dresden had to be left out which still changes the picture of the master, but a film can never suit a novel.

lual "Krabat" has been one of the classics of youth literature in Germany for almost 40 years and one wonders why nobody tried to make a movie out of it earlier. Actually, it is not that hard to answer this question since "Krabat" is a very grim and dark tale with some gruesome deaths, an ending that comes across as rather anticlimactic and above all an incredible amount of religious symbolism (even though the book is no sappy Christian novel) that would make it hard to market it. Parents would not go and see this movie with their kids and young people might not find it cool enough. Fortunately, the producers were smart enough to think of another target group: grown-ups who read the book in their youth and have been haunted by it ever since.Some changes have been made. The symbolism is reduced, the role of the "Kantorka" is slightly expanded, which makes the showdown a little more exciting and Tonda's love to Worschula plays a bigger part than it does in the novel. Make no mistake, though, both women still have small roles. The story is shortened by one year (so that it now covers only two years instead of three which ultimately saves the life of one of the boys - and to those who only watched the movie but haven't read the book: It is not the guy you think it might be) and the story centers even more on Krabat than in the book, which means that all scenes that explain more about the master such as the sorcerer's duel and the trip to the Elector in Dresden were left out.I don't mind these changes too much. While the trip to Dresden was in my opinion one of the most memorable scenes of the book I can understand why it had to go. There are some other minor changes which I won't go into. But even with the shortening of the story, Kreuzpaintner still had a lot left in his hands that he had to press into two hours. And I have to say that he does not entirely succeed. Kreuzpaintner does something Preußler does a lot in his book: He only hints at many things and hopes that the viewer will link the parts together. But Preußler had a much bigger story than Kreuzpaintner does and often this makes the movie feel rushed or incomplete. But still, the story is touching and gripping and in my opinion totally satisfying.The cinematography is outstanding. The images are truly beautiful, and the aerial shots even allow the viewer to see the entire set. Incredible work has been done here. Now, in most big German productions there is one scene in which the director decides to go totally Hollywood and usually this ends in a disaster. The same thing unfortunately happens here when the boys get into a fight with some marauding soldiers. Kreuzpaintner tries to out-Scott Ridley Scott here and the picture is so distorted that not only can you barely see what is happening but it also really hurts the eyes. What makes this even worse is that this makes it look like they tried to cover up bad fighting stunts with these scenes even though I am sure that they were in fact done well.The actors are mainly well cast. Brühl, Redl (especially Redl!), Stadlober all act well and make us forget the actor behind the role (Brühl and Redl succeed better than Stadlober) Hanno Koffler, whom I usually like a lot, does some over-acting which seems annoying at first, but since he plays Juro that might have been a deliberate choice. Unfortunately, David Kross is a little weak, but this seems to be the curse of title characters who, after all, are supposed to serve as models for identification. The guy I actually liked best was Moritz Grove, who plays Merten as thoughtful, caring and in the end almost tragic. All in all,it has to be said that the casting agents really did their job well in making these guys distinguishable, even though some of their parts are rather small.While I liked the set design and the costumes, I was not too pleased about the make-up. Smeering some black paint on strategic places on the actors' faces so that they look dirty but still pretty gets on my nerves when it happens through an entire movie. It really looks fake after a while and when you get to scenes where the actors show their shaved armpits, you cannot help but laugh at this pseudo-historical mess.I have to say, in spite of some criticism I really liked the movie and I will recommend it to everyone. To people who read the book it will bring back great childhood memories and others who have not read it will find the movie entertaining, thrilling and maybe even scary.But just like the movie ends on a big "f--- you" to the audience I will end this review with my biggest gripe about the movie: Who on earth made the decision to put such a terrible song at the end of the movie? The picture has such an incredibly beautiful score and does everything to set the mood right and they actually decide to put some electro dance track over the credits!!!! This must be one of the worst choices of a film-promoting song in film history! The people behind this decision should really lower their heads in shame!