The tagline for this movie is "Magic is just around the corner."

"Magic in all the wrong places" is more like it. This adaptation of Cornelia Funke's novel should have been a delightful fantasy film. But thanks to director and co-screenwriter Richard Claus, overblown special effects and a choppy narrative trump story, character development and just about everything else.

Thieving and deceiving

Both the book and the film tell the story of two orphans, teenaged Prosper (Aaron Johnson) and his six-year-old brother Bo (Jasper Harris). When their aunt and uncle (Carole Boyd and Bob Goody) try to separate them, the boys flee to Venice, and are taken in by a gang of kids led by Scipio (Rollo Weeks). The thief lord of the title, Scipio takes loot from expensive houses, which the rest of the gang -- Hornet (Alice Connor), Riccio (George MacKay) and Mosca (Lathaniel Dyer) -- then sell to Barbarossa (Alexi Sayle), who runs an antiques shop and fences stolen goods on the side.

Prosper and Bo have barely begun to adjust to their new lives when Victor (Jim Carter), a detective hired by their aunt and uncle, starts trying to track them down. At the same time, a mysterious client hires Scipio to steal a wooden wing, and even tells him where he can find it. But like Scipio itself, there is more to this mission than meets the eye.

Competent acting ...

The actors do a good job with what they're asked to do, though in general The Thief Lord doesn't demand as much from them as the book does from its characters. Among the younger actors, Johnson and Weeks get the bulk of the dialogue, while Harris has little to do besides look cute and jump into someone's arms every so often. Connor, MacKay and Dyer are mostly there to lend an extra hand when battling grown-ups and to help demonstrate the film's unofficial motto, "Family is where you find it."

As for the adults, I would've liked to have seen more of Carter's detective, who is closer to The Pink Panther's Inspector Clouseau than Sam Spade, and less of Caroline Goodall, whose role as Ida the photographer was needlessly built up. The movie also spends too much time illustrating just how awful the aunt and uncle are, to the point of including a knock-out, drag-down fight between them and the kids at Ida's house. Fun? Yes. Necessary? Not really. And as much as I like Vanessa Redgrave, her scene did nothing except get her name in the cast.

... and distracted directing

The Thief Lord has a lot of ground to cover in 98 minutes, and one would've thought Claus would have wanted to focus on getting in all the important plot points. Unfortunately, he spends way too much time, energy, and money on the climatic merry-go-round sequence, which has fireworks and all sorts of unnecessary special effects. Maybe Claus thought he was making a Harry Potter film instead and imagined a wizard yelling, "Explodum Maxima!" just after the bad guy showed up. He also probably forgot that if one character magically becomes older and taller and another becomes younger and shorter, it doesn't make sense for the former's clothes to still fit him while the latter's are suddenly much too loose.

I couldn't help wondering if Claus had shot the merry-go-round sequence first, because the rest of the narrative is extremely choppy in places. It's almost as if Claus didn't have time to get all of his shots, and told editor Peter R. Adam just to splice things together without worrying about the transitions. I was also disappointed by how little the movie showed of Venice, the story's nominal setting and the source of much of the book's magic. Aside from a few shots, mostly at the beginning, there is relatively little to be seen of the canals, the alleyways or anything else identifiably Venetian. And aside from an occasional "Grazie!", there's little Italian to be heard either -- not even from Ida, who despite having grown up in a Venetian orphanage sounds about as Italian as I do!

Verdict: two and a half out of five stars

My wife and I got the DVD as a gift, which made The Thief Lord an OK way to spend an hour and a half. I doubt I would've invested more time and money to buy it or see it on the big screen, even if it had gotten a theatrical release in the U.S. For real magic, try Funke's novel instead.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8