Käpt'n Blaubär - Der Film

I saw this film on a rainy Sunday afternoon in a little Berlin cinema - half filled with very small children, and their mothers. After nearly an hour the lobby of this theater was filled with crying children - and their desperate mothers vainly trying to console them.

The remaining audience, about a dozen young adults (obviously film-students), was staring like hypnotized at the screen.

Unfortunately, German film history is not littered with outstanding productions of animated features. I found out that this film won the German Film Academy Award in 2000. It was up to now the only German animated feature ever. And rightly so!

A fun movie for a saturday afternoon. Suitably for both children and adults, though the humor seems somewhat too unidimensional. The Käpt'n Blaubär book is praised as pretty good reading with some deep thoughts (I haven't read it so far), but it doesn't seem to have too much in common with the film in that respect. Probably like comparing the Dilbert Principle with the comic strip.

The characters are known from TV but are much more developed there than in the movie. To me it seems like nothing more than a money-making scam riding on the popularity of the TV-show and the book.

I think, this was the funniest movie of 1999. The partially computer animated film is comparable in quality to those of the big studios. The humor is excellent, but not necessarily understandable for small children. When I watched the movie most small kids seemed to be rather afraid of some scenes while I could not stop laughing. The music and, above all, the voices of Wolfgang Völz and Helge Schneider added substantially to the fun of this film.

I did not expect overly much from this movie when I first heard about it, but Helge Schneider's voice acting and Walter Moers' unique way of storytelling convinced me to watch it. On the surface, it is simply an animated feature for kids, but much of the humour and the action is clearly aimed on an adult audience and will probably go right over kids heads. Nevertheless, the somewhat simplified setting with Käptn Blaubär, his three grandchildren and Hein Blöd, his first mate and only crew member on the one side and the both sinister and ridiculous insane scientist-artist-genius Professor Doctor Feinfinger with his countless evil super gadgets and monstrous allies is appealing and is similar to all too well known superhero and Bond settings. But Moers adds his own special twist and the whole affair is completely ridiculous and very funny. The voice acting of all the characters, especially all-round entertaining genius Helge Schneider who also contributed some of the music, is superb and makes the movie even more fun to watch. Some scenes are known to scare the wits out of small children, chiefly when the Sea Shadows attack Blaubärs elderly sailing ship.

Summary: suitable for kids and adults alike, but adults with a strong inner child will get the most out of it. 9/10.