Recently orphaned brothers Prosper (a young Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who I seriously doubt still has this one on his CV) and Bo (Jasper Harris) are entrusted to the care of their cold-hearted aunt and uncle and soon flee to Venice to avoid their imminent separation. In Venice they then become street urchins under the leadership of the mysterious and masked Thief Lord (Rollo Weeks, the resident Artful Dodger here), who introduces them to his gang. Inhabiting an abandoned cinema, the kids steal from the rich to feed themselves but soon arouse the attention of bumbling detective Victor Getz (Jim Carter), but an even stronger threat to them is the existence of a magical treasure, from a forgotten past, that can alter the age of anybody who uses it. Along for the ride is sympathetic photographer Ida Getz (Caroline Goodall, who somehow went from starring in Schindler's List to this).
Oh, dear God. This is just catastrophic. The Thief Lord, based on a Cornelia Funke novel, is not a family fantasy movie. It is something that I'd bet has been screened to torture the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Around the thirty-minute mark I could feel what I perceived to be vomit slowly travelling up through my throat and while I didn't actually end up puking, I truly don't know how. That really is how cheesy, cliched, skittish and lazily imagined it is. For starters, director Richard Claus was clearly fine with having his entire cast retain their English accents when most of them were playing Italians, for fuck's sake. Then, he paces and frames most scenes and especially the action ones like a Benny Hill sketch, even when they're not meant to be funny. The ones that are meant to be funny, meanwhile, have absolutely no consideration of timing, the visual effects are thin and unconvincingly even by low-budget standards and the production design is about as fresh and detailed as the illustrations in a re-print of a storybook. Nigel Clarke and Michael Csanyi-Willis' score is also inescapably derivative and more heavy-handed than a chef decorating a wedding cake, and the editing looks more rushed than an emergency vehicle responding to a 000 call.
Oh, dear God. This is just catastrophic. The Thief Lord, based on a Cornelia Funke novel, is not a family fantasy movie. It is something that I'd bet has been screened to torture the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Around the thirty-minute mark I could feel what I perceived to be vomit slowly travelling up through my throat and while I didn't actually end up puking, I truly don't know how. That really is how cheesy, cliched, skittish and lazily imagined it is. For starters, director Richard Claus was clearly fine with having his entire cast retain their English accents when most of them were playing Italians, for fuck's sake. Then, he paces and frames most scenes and especially the action ones like a Benny Hill sketch, even when they're not meant to be funny. The ones that are meant to be funny, meanwhile, have absolutely no consideration of timing, the visual effects are thin and unconvincingly even by low-budget standards and the production design is about as fresh and detailed as the illustrations in a re-print of a storybook. Nigel Clarke and Michael Csanyi-Willis' score is also inescapably derivative and more heavy-handed than a chef decorating a wedding cake, and the editing looks more rushed than an emergency vehicle responding to a 000 call.
At one point, a character says "I'm gonna be sick!" I thought, 'Funny, I was just thinking the same thing.' It's very fitting that the title of The Thief Lord contains the word "thief," because thievery is a crime. Just like this cinematic variety. 2/10.
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