Kirandeep Yoder
The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
The title of this German film means literally that it is about the secret of the blue owls and this already has a touch of Harry Potter to it, not only because of Hedwig. And there we already have one connection why you could say that these films are the German equivalent to Potter, apart from the obvious that the main character is a magician that comes from a family of magicians too. But there are also several aspects that make for crucial differences. One would be that this here released in 2004 is only a duology (the first came out two years earlier). There are no people dying and it is generally lighter in tone. And there is a lot more. Hermine Huntgeburth did not return as director from the first film, but Franziska Buch took over and did a good job in my opinion. The screenplay is once again by Elfie Donnelly, the inventor of Bibi Blocksberg (and Benjamin Blümchen). And I liked the script too.This time Bibi struggles at school, so she has to go to a boarding school for the summer where she gets a new good friend, a boy who may be something like a love interest already (played by the really young Frederick Lau), but also meets girls who are not exactly to her liking, namely the shallow superficial type. I can only say I am a bit disappointed that lead actress Sidonie von Krosigk has apparently stopped acting now because I like her in these films, but oh well as long as she is happy it's fine I guess. I already mentioned the name Lau and if you take a look at the cast list here, you will find really many well-known names from German cinema like Noethen, Riemann, Selge, Bleibtreu and Petri (some of them reprising her roles from the first film) that show you how beloved not just the Bibi Blocksberg character is, but also how kids films are generally crowd magnets for known actors here in Germany. To this date actually. And another we have here is of course Corinna Harfouch, who plays the antagonist again in this one, namely the wicked witch Rabia, who can indeed be described as "rabiat". Harfouch won a German Film Award for her portrayal in the first film, so I really would have been shocked if she didn't return, even if her story would have made it look realistic. But with Rabia losing her powers at the end of this film here, so ends the franchise relatively quickly.So yes, it was pretty short-lived, especially if we compare it to Detlev Buck's more recent take on the subject. It is really difficult to compare these 2 approaches I would say because they are really different and have hardly anything in common except the Bibi character. This one here focuses more on witchcraft and mysteries, while the Buck films are teenage fun mostly, a touch of Hannah Montana, with maybe not always the best stories, but really good and catchy music. I like them both I guess. The good thing about the sequel from 2004 is also that it never drags despite a pretty massive running time of 110 minutes (for a kids movie). I give it a thumbs-up and in my opinion (a thumbs-down for the sexism against males though as honestly the male characters here were quite on the doofus level at least Noethen and Selge), it is very much worth checking out for the (not very) young ones and those young at heart like myself. Shame they never made a third film.
