The Little Witch

Decent watch, probably won't watch again, but can recommend for first time viewers, particularly young ones.

I found another weirdly dubbed German movie. Despite that, the story itself is endearing, but I think there is something of a cultural perspective on witches that I'm missing as an American.

Our witch stories tend to use more of Kleine's type, but the old world leans towards old, warty, children eating witches.

If nothing else, then there is a palatable moral quandry in this that makes for a good moral.

I wanted to give this film a low star rating but that hardly seems fair. The film itself is beautifully made. Effects, costumes, locations etc are all truly wonderful. The acting is great and the lead role is played beautifully. What lets the film down for a non-German speaking English person is the awful American dubbing. The actors doing this are DIRE. Watch the film in German with English subtitles. It's magic (pun intended).

Just watched this with my 11 yr old and we loved it! Loved the characters and the set was just full of so much to see. Cgi was pretty good and special effects makeup was spot on. I would actually be happy to sit through this again without moaning about it!

If you don't know this, the writer of the book is famous in Germany /Europe. The book of the little witch is famous in Europe and may be also in the US. However, this movie -a Swiss German production - is great, I really enjoyed it and Karoline Herfurth is close to brilliant in the role of the little witch and Swiss Mike Schaerer is really excellent in directing the film. The settings are enchanting, CGI is very good but not perfect and if you look at Otfried Preußler's message at the end of the movie, I found it is not only for kids. Enjoyable movie for the whole family.

In 1984 I saw this movie called Neverending Story. Goofy puppets, the simple story of good vs evil and the added bonus of a child reading the tale and getting caught up in it. I thought it was different than other movies that I was watching at the time and only later I found out it wasn't an American film, but a German one. I loved that movie and in the same positive sense, Die Kleine Hexe is just as goofy and simple and perfect for the telling of a fairy (or in this case, witch) tale.

The characters are a relatively young witch and her raven familiar breaking tradition from the old and nasty witches that are her seniors. Good vs bad witches, magic done just for fun, talking animatronic animals, what else do you need? Not a perfect film by any means, but a fun and entertaining children's story. I liked it.