renata-reborn I have been in Opera house three or four times in my childhood and it was quite punishment for me: to keep silence and understand no word. (And watch an over-built heroin dying a quarter an hour with constant screaming, sorry soprano aria.) Although I love classical music I have avoided opera for years. Last week I bought this DVD only from curiosity and was fascinated. For the first time in my life I voluntarily sit and listen to opera. And understand. And love it! I am not expert for opera as others who criticized this performance are but I think this movie was created for people like me - who would have never heard it without this opportunity. So, thank you, a crew of Magic Flute. And hope it is not your last idea. (By the way, when Mozart decided to have this opera in German language experts were shocked because the "official" opera language had been Italian and German was considered quite unsuitable for such sacred piece of work as opera was. But ordinary people understood and it was probably Mozart's target.I do not think he is rolling in his grave because of English version.)

jen-parry A man behind me commented at the end, 'What a bizarre idea', which I suppose it was, if he was expecting a filmed version of the staged opera. What we get, however, is a proper movie, with all the tricks and all the realism that can offer. The plot is - always was - nonsense, which suits this semi-fantastic treatment perfectly. Branaugh uses his CGI with drama and humour as well as the poignancy of the First World War to hold the story together. The principals were ideal - they looked right as well as sounding perfect. Papageno was a comic delight. Liz Smith - not a singing role - was enjoying herself as much as the audience where I saw the film enjoyed her. The singing would be enough to hold an audience on its own.

writers_reign Kenneth Branagh could well have subtitled his second turkey in as many weeks and his third this year The Cranes Are Flying for yes, folks, our Ken has discovered a thing that you can mount the camera on and it will then climb in the air and allow you to shoot the film from the point of view of a cloud and that's his angle of choice for a good 30 per cent of the running time; if this was a ploy to detract from his lack of ideas then it doesn't work and only draws attention to the pretentiousness on display. It's got to be a prime gobbler when Liz Smith pointedly excludes it from her CV and presumably asked for her name to be removed from the credits. Stephen Fry has the chutzpah to take a bow for the lyrics; it's patently obvious that he has never heard of Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Frank Loesser, etc, let alone studied them, in fact if it comes to that he hasn't even bothered to study a Rhyming Dictionary and is clearly a paid-up member of the Kiss My Assonance School Of Lyric Writing. Branagh himself is clearly an advocate of the If It Ain't Broke, Break It, brigade for having set Shakespeare in Japan earlier in the year he now sets Mozart in the First World War but not the one you may have seen in the newsreels where the trenches were furnished with a melange of mud and rats; you could EAT off the floors of these trenches and though he allows an occasional rifle shot for authenticity infantrymen topple over without so much as a scratch let alone any of that nasty blood. This doesn't leave a lot on the positive side; okay, the singers Mime effectively enough, they are, after all, mostly trained opera singers but apart from that there's a two-hour gap where the film should be.

paterfam001 Ingmar Bergman had the right idea -- present 'The Magic Flute' as a filmed stage presentation, complete with audience, intermission and a certain amount of behind-the-scenes byplay. Branagh's version suffers from being a straight movie, more-or-less realistically filmed, though with an overabundance of Art Direction and Set Design, and cheap CGI for the magical effects. The stage gives the distance that allows enchantment, the film's realism negates that. The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life. Would it have been better if the budget had been bigger? Possibly, but maybe not. The story is sweet, but, in fact, rather silly - Schickaneder was, after all, not Goethe. In the post-'Lord of the Rings' era we expect our heroes to undergo rather tougher trials in pursuit of the Magic Dingus, and we expect our villains to be more effectual. Dramatic conflict is on the low side of gripping. That said, the movie was generally pretty to look at, the singers were good-looking and svelte, their acting was pretty decent, ***** the MUSIC WAS GLORIOUS *****, and they sang it well. I sat the whole time with a smile on my face, my soul vibrating along with the singers' vocal cords. Somebody, I hope, will tell Kenneth Branagh that the circling-camera trick is corny. And tell Mr. Frye that double (feminine) rhymes, though all right in an inflected language like German, sound goofy in English.