The Magic Flute 2023 Movie Review
One night, 17-year-old Tim (Jack Wolfe), a singing student at the legendary Mozart boarding school in the Austrian Alps, discovers a centuries-old secret portal that catapults him into the fantastic world of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”. As Prince Tamino, he meets the cunning bird catcher Papageno (Iwan Rheon), with whose help he has to endure dangerous adventures every night from now on in order to free Princess Pamina (Asha Banks) from the clutches of Prince Sarastro (Morris Robinson). But even during the day, Tim’s everyday school life is not boring, because he tries to get the coveted leading role of Tamino in the annual school production of “Magic Flute”, and also gets to know the tough Sophie (Niamh McCormack), who really turns his head…
With The Magic Flute, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart created one of the most popular operas in music history. A story of good and evil, love and revenge, brightest day and darkest night, great heroic story and fabulous comedy at the same time. The fairytale story, located in magical Egypt, is reinforced by Mozart’s music, which is both playful and serious. It is material that children and adults still love and that is made for the big screen: colorful worlds, atmospheric music, stylized heroic stories. A good production (see Bergman’s The Magic Flute ) makes great cinema out of it; this one is occupied by Wilson Gonzalez Ochsenknecht ( Die Wilden Kerle ).
The Magic Flute is not only a poorly staged retelling of Mozart’s Magic Flute, the film also packs the material into a boring and superfluous framework story. It is about the young singing student Tim Walker ( Jack Wolfe , Shadow and Bone ), who fails at a Salzburg conservatory in the audition for the role of Taminos. Meanwhile, at night he discovers a secret portal in a grandfather clock that leads him to magical Egypt, where he lives through the storyline of The Magic Flute as Prince Tamino alongside Papageno ( Iwan Rheon , Game of Thrones ). In the real one, Tim falls in love with Sophie ( Niamh McCormack), the daughter of the director of the conservatory. However, their love story is not a reflection of the fairytale love story between Tamino and Princess Pamina ( Asha Banks , Revenge is Sweet ), but rather follows the typical narrative of a romantic comedy. It is a failed and inappropriate attempt to give the Magic Flute material a more authentic touch. It would have been a much more cinematic undertaking to rely fully on the power of the fairytale world of The Magic Flute and bring it to the screen in a colorful and detailed way.
In The Magic Flute there can be no question of attention to detail and blaze of colour . The grey-blue images of the magical world hardly stand in contrast to the dreary world of the singing school and although they darken the numerous CGI images beyond recognition, they cannot hide the loveless design of embarrassing CGI snakes. The potpourri of intolerability not only includes computer lizards, missing lighting technicians and Teddy Teclebrhan in the role of the music teacher; the main problem of The Magic Fluteare the terrible vocal performances of the main actors. The numbers of the Magic Flute are presented to us with blaring musical singing, as if they had been imported from the Stage Theater in Hamburg, where every day thousands of small-town graces thrown in flowery blouses sweeten their short vacation with sticky, shiny theater pretzels and the African rhythms from The Lion King. This small-minded remake of The Magic Flute is in good hands there. Between grossly overpriced admission prices, middle-class entertainment and an audience that just doesn’t dare to go to the opera.
