adventure
“Checker Tobi” on a scavenger hunt around the world
Tobias Krell discovers the world. photo
© -/megaherz film and television/dpa
In the movie “Checker Tobi and the Journey to the Flying Rivers” fans get their money’s worth, because what the child star does so well and enjoys on television, he also succeeds here: explaining the world.
In the previous film four years ago (“Checker Tobi and the Secret of Our Planet”), Tobias Krell dealt with water, this time he is interested in air. The story is told as a scavenger hunt: a postman (Klaas Heufer-Umlauf) brings the protagonist a treasure chest. To open it, you need a key – which Tobi’s old childhood friend Marina (Marina M. Blanke) carries. So the journey begins.
The search takes the adventurer down into the world’s largest cave in Vietnam, into a bay with thousands of limestone islands, to a Buddhist stupa in the Gobi Desert and to indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest. Little “Checker Tobi” fans get their money’s worth, because what the child star does so well and enjoys on television, he also succeeds here: explaining the world.
There are also impressive scenes for the adult companions in the cinema. “In many places we tried to make it work for both of them,” explained Tobias Krell in the dpa interview. He believes that adults can enjoy the visuals of the film more – such as images of the Mongolian steppe with wild horses – while younger people can go along with the adventure in terms of content. “The children tend to think: ‘They’re sleeping in a yurt? It’s a tent, it’s so cold!”
One or two funny scenes were also included with the adults in mind, said Krell. The KiKA presenter knows that his audience doesn’t just consist of children. He said he doesn’t know the average age of his viewers. But: “I can report that at least 50 percent of the time it’s the parents who recognize me on the street.”
After ten years as a checker, does he perhaps want to stop and devote himself entirely to the older audience? He said he was “definitely going to do a little bit more.” “If at some point the moment comes when I have to start pretending or acting out my interest and curiosity or the childlike look – that would be one of those times. But fortunately that hasn’t been the case so far.”
– Checker Tobi and the journey to the flying rivers, Germany 2023, 92 min., FSK 0, by Johannes Honsell, with Tobi Krell, Marina M. Blanke, Klaas Heufer-Umlauf.