Die Jugendstreiche des Knaben Karl

A very tepid account of the youth of Karl Valentin that makes you wonder whether the makers had any affinity with the work of Valentin. You might expect from a film that deals with Valentin's life, to have at least some of the anarchy of Valentin's films, but it is all too tame. Some of Valentin's sketches are interwoven into the story, but they are poorly executed.

Included is a fragment of Der neue Schreibtisch (1914), that painfully demonstrates what this biography is missing: the notion that film and life must be an unexpected surprise.