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UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) I remember very well when there was a casting show for the child actor to play Wickie which ran several weeks and was put into effect by Michael Herbig, one of Germany's most famous comedians ("Bullyparade") and also the writer and director of this movie. He also plays a small role as a Spanish narrator, which really should have been left out. It's neither funny, nor does it add a lot to the film. This can be said about most of the movie. There are many much better children's book adaptations out there and the only scene I kinda liked was the battle between Wickie and his dad with the stone carrying sequence early on.The dad reminded me a bit of Majestix from the Asterix movies, especially when looking at how he communicates with his wife. Wickie, however, is not a rough brutal viking as they want him to be. He works much more with his mind than with his non-existing biceps. The plot is that all the viking children are abducted by another viking tribe (it is not shown how that happens, probably as it's a kids film and they may have gotten scared) and so Wickie, who managed to flee, and his clan need to get them back. There are actually some interesting names cast as villains. if you are slightly familiar with German cinema, you may recognize the late Günther Kaufmann (worked a lot with Fassbinder), Christoph Maria Herbst, Herbert Feuerstein or Jürgen Vogel. Herbig has worked a lot with Herbst in the past, but his "Bullyparade" colleagues Tramitz and Kavanian are not around this time.All in all this movie is a fairly weak comic book adaptation. The sequel which came out not much later is slightly better thanks to the introduction of an interesting new character, but not by much. With all these great children's books' adaptations out there currently, I cannot recommend to watch this one. There's many better choices and I am somehow surprised to see this was the most successful German movie at the box office from 2009, back in the year of "Avatar". The humor was just really weak here. One example was the underwater sequence, which did almost nothing for me comedy-wise. Apart from that, I assume the dramatic highlight should be the father/son-relationship, but on an emotional level it did not strike me either, even if the song about that issue was nice, but also much more comedy-like than dramatic. What was truly bad, was the version of the Hey Wickie theme song they included here. All in all, not recommended.

Thom-Peters Compared to this movie Harry Potter, Asterix and classical fairy tales look very down to earth. They claim that magic exists and that if you know how to use it you can actually work miracles. Young Wickie's only power is his alleged cleverness. But his solutions just ignore the laws of physics and logic. And that's not clever at all.At one point the ship of Wickie's Vikings has to catch up with another one that's quite ahead of them. A map illustrates the situation: Wickie's ship is on the right side of an island, both ships are heading for a place on the left side. Wickie sees that the route across the island is only a third of the route around it and gets the genius idea to just cross it - with their ship. Harry Potter would have figured something out and wiggled his wand, but Wickie's men really have to pull the big viking ship for miles and miles over land. Later on he uses some minuscule kites flying next to the majestic big sail of their ship to get it up into the air. Cleverness never looked that stupid.The whole point of the Wickie character is that he's a small and weak Viking boy who is still of great value to his community because his ideas are based on the general knowledge of our times and therefore are way ahead of his. In this movie he's got only wacky ideas that even an eight year old should recognize as humbug. Still his inanities gain him the admiration of the elders.All grown-up vikings are depicted as idiots, all kinds of idiots: the vain idiot, the bragging idiot, the cowardly idiot, the "No, I'm not stolen from the Asterix comics"-troubadour idiot. The kids and the women are basically alright, but the men are all half-wits. Would you really consider to expose your children to such hateful nonsense? A good comedy will lift you up, this annoying movie is set to dumb people down. If you are intellectually insecure enough to need to laugh about stupid people, you will like this movie because it doesn't feature anything else, but please don't expose innocent children to this junk.I didn't read the "Wickie" books from the 60ies or watched the 70ies TV-show, but it would really surprise me if they'd be even slightly as heart- and witless as this Michael 'Bully' Herbig movie. Yes, that's the director's official nickname. Right in the beginning Wickie is forced by a big strong grown-up bully to engage himself in a duel of physical strengths designed to humiliate him in front of the whole village. Evil. Who's that bully? Wickie's father. Now that's really evil! This is definitely not a family movie.

caipirina7 Thursday 17:10 .. if your mom made a dentist appointment at that time, you had all the reason to hate her, it was Wickie time !!!I believe that for those who grew up like Bully in the early 70ies in Germany will be extremely pleased with this movie as I was. I have not watched the animated Wickie since I was a kid and I had no idea that there was a new version in the making until I saw it on the menu of an LH flight back from Tokyo .. talk about the odds as this was (according to wiki) the first cooperation of ZDF - ORF and some Japanese channel ... (and I am still talking about the animated show from 1972 -74)As to the movie, it just triggered all the .. errr... triggers .. in me .. the production value was fantastic (as Bully had showcased before, good and careful use of FX is not Hollywood alone territory) ... the story is nothing to write home about ... but it works extremely well .. it kept me focused for the whole time and made me wish for more ... The characters were very well cast. The partial musical cues from the old TV show nearly brought me to tears. Now, there might be a problem ... I have NO idea how today's kids might like this, or even young parents who grew up in the 80ies and for them Wickie was just one of many many offerings on the recently established cable channels ... As much as I wish for a sequel, unless they shot one secretly back to back .. the kids playing Wickie and his GF will be too old to reprise the roles.Overall ... A movie very well done, but I think it depends on what your former relation is with this little Vicking .. and how much you love it.

dukeluke-1 First of all I have to say that I never was a big fan of the original TV-series, but the main reason for this is the fact that I was born in the mid 80's and thus my cartoon heroes were those who came after Wickie. Thus I went into the movie without any expectations and ended up being pleasantly surprised.The story is neither overly inventive nor epic, but there's always enough happening to keep the viewer interested.The movie had plenty of fun moments, I couldn't help noticing that it's mostly targeted at the younger generation but there are also a few mature references. Altogether anyone who has a good relationship with their inner child should have a few good laughs throughout the playtime.The cast is mostly unknown (at least to me since I don't watch that many German productions) but excellent. Almost every character has a striking resemblance to his or her cartoon counterpart and the acting is decent.Yet again I have to bow in front of Bully Herbig when it comes to production value. The movie looks and sounds fantastic, if it had been a high-budget Hollywood production there probably wouldn't have been too much of a difference to the product at hand (Apart from the addition of some overdone special FX). The music composer Ralf Wengenmayr did an excellent job of working the original melodies into the score as well as adding some new ones which really matched the movie's mood.Most people, Wickie fan or not, should enjoy it.