Puzzled at the negative reviews, I thought I'd put my two cents in after viewing this old favorite again this evening.
The plot begins with a 10-year old boy named Emil taking a bus by himself from his home in a small city in West Germany to Berlin to visit his grandmother and cousins. His mother is also trusting him with 400 German marks, which I read would have been about $100 in the mid-60s when this film was made.
Well, Emil's mom made one blunder. She made a point of giving Emil the envelope with money to him just before he got on the bus. Neither of them knew a notorious pickpocket was about to board the same bus and would seize the opportunity to steal that money. Had she only pinned it inside his coat at the house...the whole film would not have been made.
Helped by the pickpocket's actions, Emil soon falls asleep during the bus ride and the pickpocket, a colorfully dressed man named Grundeis, lifts the money and immediately tells the driver to let him off at the next corner. It seems the bus has reached Berlin but Grundeis gets off before it gets to the depot. Emil wakes up when the bus stops-a totally likely thing as any motor travelers know. He discovers the money is gone and quickly gets off where the thief did and follows him.
He tracks him to a restaurant where the man is seen ordering through the window. He tries to enlist the help of a traffic cop, acting as a human traffic signal from a little platform in the middle of the intersection. But the cop does nothing more helpful than telling him where a police station is.
Coming to the rescue is an older boy, apparently about 14, named Gustav, who seems to have a wealth of business cards for whatever occupation he can claim, including being head of a detective agency. When Grundeis leaves the restaurant, Gustav directs Emil to change some of the money that was his, not stolen, for the bill Grundeis gave the waitress. He is figuring the pinholes in the bill will help prove it was part of Emil's stolen money. Gustav tracks Grundeis and smartly picks up little pieces of paper he is discarding in the street. They were a note from two men in the restaurant, including a man known as "The Baron" (Walter Slezak, a long time movie bad guy) telling Grundeis where to meet them that evening.
Gustav is able to get all the pieces but one that went down a gutter-the one with the name of the hotel meeting place. He meets up with Emil and then rides him around on his bicycle as Gustav is rounding up his team of detectives-four boys including twins who have a neat entrance. They go on a hike to "headquarters"-the home of a fifth boy working for Gustav, Diesnstag, who has a broken foot in a cast, to make their plans.
By staking out the nearby hotels, they are able to find Emil's thief, who is seen going into a war-bombed ruin of a building and disappearing. What they couldn't hear at that hotel meeting was the plan of the three "skrinks"-as the crooks were called. Grundeis is known as "The Mole" for his tunneling ability. He has been hired by The Baron to tunnel from the ruins to the underground vault of a nearby bank they plan to rob.
The boys are soon joined by Emil's cousin, a girl about Gustav's age, named Pony, who gets involved because she tracked the "detective" who brought her a note from Emil for their grandmother telling her not to worry about him because he wasn't on the bus to be picked up as planned.
In case I haven't made it clear, there are many humorous scenes throughout this comedy-drama, including a couple involving Dienstag and Emil tricking Diesntag's older sister away from her endless telephone conversations, so they can free up the phone so the detectives can communicate with "headquarters." Grundeis himself is quite animated, moving about with energetic spurts that bring to mind the antics of Stan Laurel.
All the detectives save Gustav at one point are at the police station going through photos of crooks, trying to convince them about the crooks they've been following. This was after they got one policeman to go to the ruins but when he couldn't find the entrance to the underground area where Grundeis was tunneling, he accused them of playing games with him.
I'll leave the bulk of the rest for you to enjoy, involving the bank burglary and escape attempts.
There is a scene just before the end that totally reflects what the main thrust was of the book on which this movie is based, written in 1929. That amusing finish was about the only thing in the book that was much good. People, I put it to you that this movie is about the best example I can provide to argue that sometimes the movie is BETTER than the book.
Basically, in the book, very little happens. There are no clandestine meetings in hotels with detectives spying, no bank robbery at all. It tells a real simple story about Emil encountering a thief and getting some boys to help foil the thief. I thought it quite dull on its own merit, and especially compared to this movie.
What it really did to make me love it like I do was give me a young boy to follow who I could easily imagine what I would do were I in his shoes. We got all sorts of scenery as it was filmed in Germany, and that was cool. I thought it funny as a kid to see a German police car being a VW Beetle. Must be good for following suspects on a bicycle, thought I, but anyone in a normal car could zip away from the cops easily.
The boy detectives didn't do anything extraordinary to make it hard to believe they were that young. It was said that one of their biggest previous cases was finding and retrieving a lost cat. This was a positive to me-that they WERE boys, not agents using techniques like the FBI or something.
Seeing it in the theater as an 8-year-old, I thought it captivating to think of a boy close to my age traveling a long distance by himself, and then getting caught up in a theft and then a bank burglary complete with some real danger. I love the line an IMDB reviewer used about how this film "echoes my idea of the limitless adventure of childhood at its best." That reflects a big part of why this was a great movie, fun for adults bug particularly wonderful for kids.
It has always stood as one of my all-time favorite Disney movies and I give it a 10.
The plot begins with a 10-year old boy named Emil taking a bus by himself from his home in a small city in West Germany to Berlin to visit his grandmother and cousins. His mother is also trusting him with 400 German marks, which I read would have been about $100 in the mid-60s when this film was made.
Well, Emil's mom made one blunder. She made a point of giving Emil the envelope with money to him just before he got on the bus. Neither of them knew a notorious pickpocket was about to board the same bus and would seize the opportunity to steal that money. Had she only pinned it inside his coat at the house...the whole film would not have been made.
Helped by the pickpocket's actions, Emil soon falls asleep during the bus ride and the pickpocket, a colorfully dressed man named Grundeis, lifts the money and immediately tells the driver to let him off at the next corner. It seems the bus has reached Berlin but Grundeis gets off before it gets to the depot. Emil wakes up when the bus stops-a totally likely thing as any motor travelers know. He discovers the money is gone and quickly gets off where the thief did and follows him.
He tracks him to a restaurant where the man is seen ordering through the window. He tries to enlist the help of a traffic cop, acting as a human traffic signal from a little platform in the middle of the intersection. But the cop does nothing more helpful than telling him where a police station is.
Coming to the rescue is an older boy, apparently about 14, named Gustav, who seems to have a wealth of business cards for whatever occupation he can claim, including being head of a detective agency. When Grundeis leaves the restaurant, Gustav directs Emil to change some of the money that was his, not stolen, for the bill Grundeis gave the waitress. He is figuring the pinholes in the bill will help prove it was part of Emil's stolen money. Gustav tracks Grundeis and smartly picks up little pieces of paper he is discarding in the street. They were a note from two men in the restaurant, including a man known as "The Baron" (Walter Slezak, a long time movie bad guy) telling Grundeis where to meet them that evening.
Gustav is able to get all the pieces but one that went down a gutter-the one with the name of the hotel meeting place. He meets up with Emil and then rides him around on his bicycle as Gustav is rounding up his team of detectives-four boys including twins who have a neat entrance. They go on a hike to "headquarters"-the home of a fifth boy working for Gustav, Diesnstag, who has a broken foot in a cast, to make their plans.
By staking out the nearby hotels, they are able to find Emil's thief, who is seen going into a war-bombed ruin of a building and disappearing. What they couldn't hear at that hotel meeting was the plan of the three "skrinks"-as the crooks were called. Grundeis is known as "The Mole" for his tunneling ability. He has been hired by The Baron to tunnel from the ruins to the underground vault of a nearby bank they plan to rob.
The boys are soon joined by Emil's cousin, a girl about Gustav's age, named Pony, who gets involved because she tracked the "detective" who brought her a note from Emil for their grandmother telling her not to worry about him because he wasn't on the bus to be picked up as planned.
In case I haven't made it clear, there are many humorous scenes throughout this comedy-drama, including a couple involving Dienstag and Emil tricking Diesntag's older sister away from her endless telephone conversations, so they can free up the phone so the detectives can communicate with "headquarters." Grundeis himself is quite animated, moving about with energetic spurts that bring to mind the antics of Stan Laurel.
All the detectives save Gustav at one point are at the police station going through photos of crooks, trying to convince them about the crooks they've been following. This was after they got one policeman to go to the ruins but when he couldn't find the entrance to the underground area where Grundeis was tunneling, he accused them of playing games with him.
I'll leave the bulk of the rest for you to enjoy, involving the bank burglary and escape attempts.
There is a scene just before the end that totally reflects what the main thrust was of the book on which this movie is based, written in 1929. That amusing finish was about the only thing in the book that was much good. People, I put it to you that this movie is about the best example I can provide to argue that sometimes the movie is BETTER than the book.
Basically, in the book, very little happens. There are no clandestine meetings in hotels with detectives spying, no bank robbery at all. It tells a real simple story about Emil encountering a thief and getting some boys to help foil the thief. I thought it quite dull on its own merit, and especially compared to this movie.
What it really did to make me love it like I do was give me a young boy to follow who I could easily imagine what I would do were I in his shoes. We got all sorts of scenery as it was filmed in Germany, and that was cool. I thought it funny as a kid to see a German police car being a VW Beetle. Must be good for following suspects on a bicycle, thought I, but anyone in a normal car could zip away from the cops easily.
The boy detectives didn't do anything extraordinary to make it hard to believe they were that young. It was said that one of their biggest previous cases was finding and retrieving a lost cat. This was a positive to me-that they WERE boys, not agents using techniques like the FBI or something.
Seeing it in the theater as an 8-year-old, I thought it captivating to think of a boy close to my age traveling a long distance by himself, and then getting caught up in a theft and then a bank burglary complete with some real danger. I love the line an IMDB reviewer used about how this film "echoes my idea of the limitless adventure of childhood at its best." That reflects a big part of why this was a great movie, fun for adults bug particularly wonderful for kids.
It has always stood as one of my all-time favorite Disney movies and I give it a 10.