kids movie
“New Stories from Franz”: Summer vacation in Vienna
A criminal case brings Franz, Gabi and Eberhard together. photo
© -/Wild Bunch/dpa
Fun in the outdoor pool, eating ice cream, sleeping forever? Yes, the summer holidays are full of promise – only little Franz, who gets a lot to do in this concise children’s book adaptation.
What do you do when the two best friends don’t like each other? Actually, Franz (ten years old) is in a great, almost luxurious situation. The Summer vacation is only 13 days away and he has two great friends: Gabi and Eberhard!
It’s just stupid that the two of all people can’t smell each other at all. How Franz finally manages to reconcile the two, and how wonderfully exciting such a summer vacation can be, is what this fabulous sequel to a cinematic children’s book adaptation from 2022 tells.
Christine Nöstlinger’s books “Stories from Franz” were published between 1984 and 2011. Director Johannes Schmid is now continuing the story about Franz in the cinema.
Starring again: Jossi Jantschitsch as Franz, Nora Reidinger as Gabi and Leo Wacha as Eberhard. Ursula Strauss and Simon Schwarz are again Franz’s parents. The appearance of Maria Bill (born 1948) as the resolute Frau Berger has a long lasting effect.
A criminal case brings the children together
Three kids screaming at each other in the middle of the street in the most beautiful summer weather in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe (Vienna): “I’m only talking to you out of pity anyway!” – that can be cheerful! It’s a good thing that a veritable criminal case intervened, after all the three of them can’t argue forever: it’s Gabi who comes up with the idea of catching the thief of all people who is keeping half the Danube metropolis in suspense.
It’s about pearl necklaces that have disappeared and the question of why the strict neighbor Ms. Berger is behaving even more strangely than usual. And it’s about the role of Teacher Zigzag in this most entertainingly told summer detective case.
There’s little to nag about this snappy children’s book adaptation. Only very rarely do viewers want to take the drive out a little bit. For example, to give a little more space to the dialogues between little Franz and the elderly Mrs. Berger, who mourns her missed stage career so much.
Not only that all the “investigations”, which finally lead to the three brawlers no longer yelling at each other, are staged so grippingly that it sometimes hardly keeps you in the cinema seat – no, the great script (Sarah Wassermair) also finds it Time to talk about the things that concern Franz’s parents (his dad has a great job offer from Berlin, but doesn’t really want to leave Vienna and his family).
Friendship, envy, chaos and love in 72 minutes
At the very end, in the credits, Marco Wanda from the famous Austrian band Wanda sings about “little Franz”. A wonderful ending for a wonderful children’s film that shows us what can be told in 72 minutes of film: how much friendship and envy, how much chaos and love, how much rapprochement and understanding between young and old fit into such a short strip.
All cinema fans between the ages of 6 and 66, for whom the new “Barbie” film is much too long and cerebral, should warmly recommend these “new stories from Franz” as a concise and convincing alternative cinema program.
New stories from Franz, Austria/D 2023, 72 min., FSK from 0, by Johannes Schmid, with Jossi Jantschitsch, Nora Reidinger, Leo Wacha