"Vorstadtkrokodile" (or Suburban Crocodiles) is Christian Ditter's approach to the Max von der Grün children's book and 1977 movie. For some reason I do not understand, Ditter won Best Kids Movie of the Year at the German Film Awards 5 years ago. Must have been very weak competition. Most recently, made his foreign language film debut by working with Lily Collins and he has another project with her and Dakota Johnson coming up. He also directed the second "Vorstadtkrokodile" movie , but not the third and final one. Before that he worked on the Michael Herbig's "Wickie" sequel and the television series "Türkisch für Anfänger".
Lead actor Nick Romeo Reimann has been in the "Wilde Kerle" franchise previously, but most of the other child actors are fairly or completely new to movie acting. Still, they are better than Reimann, in whom I just can't see any range, especially in terms of drama, which sucks as all the smaller characters are there to deliver comedy and he essentially fails with delivering the edge-of-seat stuff. If you get a hand on the old original movie, take a look at it. There are some differences. For example, the wheelchair kid was played by a girl. I won't go into further detail, but it's a bit of a classic unlike this one. The core topics are similar though. It's about accepting disabled people, about brotherly loyalty and about finding out who your true friends are. It also starts with some roof action. The cast includes Nora Tschirner, rapper Smudo, Maria Schrader, Axel Stein, Ralf Richter and Jacob Matschenz. Many familiar faces here. And, last but not least, Martin Semmelrogge is also in it in a very small role. He played a main character in this movie back in the 1970s.
They included a girl in one of the main roles, also a kid for foreign roots, Albanian I believe. He reminded me a bit of Manny from "Modern Family". I kinda liked him as his "unfunniness" was intended. Most of the other humor in this film was not funny at all, but it was actually intended to be funny. Many great kids films from Germany currently out there. This is not one of them. Quite a shame, the story offers great potential, but the script simply isn't good enough. Stay away.
