Movie Review – The Thief Lord (2006)

This review of The Thief Lord was requested by Tim

Unfortunately, The Thief Lord has a lot of unused potential. The story itself is somewhat intriguing for a family film, but it fails to present it in a meaningful way. What viewers are left with is an abbreviated mess of a film that often feels disjointed and unfinished. It is likely that this one found too much cutting in the cutting room.

The main complaint is the editing and directing of the film. The story is a strong base for the film, but we are rushed into it without enough background. The addition of completely over dramatic music does not help the first chapter of the film either. Thankfully, once we are done with the turbulence in the first 20 minutes of the film it settles down and we are able to enjoy it a little more. Also, the music begins to feel a little more appropriate once we have characters that we actually care about a little. It looks like the director was attempting to rush us into the film and then try and tell the background to the story as you go along, but instead it just felt like the background was not considered important so it was skipped.

The acting is on par with what you would expect for a family film that didn’t get too much attention. As far as I know there are not any actors or actresses that are very popular in The Thief Lord and they will not get the popularity from this film. The kids could have easily been plucked from any group of kid extras. It is not to say that it was terrible, but nothing noteworthy by any means.

The film builds the mostly realistic story into one with magic, mystery, and action towards the end. It tries to make you feel as though everything is normal and believable so that the younger audience will hopefully be more interested in the magic at the end, but I have a hard time believing that they were successful. However, my daughter did actually sit through almost the entire film so it must have had enough action and adventure to keep a 20 month old entertained. And that brings up another good point to mention; it was a family friendly film. It has a clean PG rating which they do not seem to push in anyway that I could tell. My daughter never got scared, but that may not be a very good indication of how an older child that actually understood everything would react. In the end, there is enough entertainment to warrant a rental, but nothing to get your hopes up for.

The Skinny Version

Raw Score: 612,663
Sharon Movie? No

Director: Richard Claus
Writer: Richard Claus (screenplay) and Cornelia Funke (novel)
Genre: Adventure/Family/Fantasy

Subscribe to Dave’s Movie Reviews; it’s free!
Subscribe
Dave’s Movie Reviews