Emil and the Detectives

Release Date: December 18, 1964

Watch Date: July 7 – July 8, 2024

“When Emil travels to Berlin to visit his grandmother and his cousin, he finds his money has been stolen along the way. Because his grandmother needs the funds, Emil sets off in pursuit of the thief. That’s when he runs into Gustav, an enterprising young boy who rounds up his friends to help. When Emil’s cousin gets involved, they get into more trouble than they bargained for-it turns out that Emil’s pickpocket is mixed up with a couple of notorious bank robbers.”

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   First things first, what is a skrink?

   I’ve looked it up and I just keep getting linked to shrink. So if anyone can please, please, tell me what a skrink is, that’d be great. I think it means like…ugh, “sus” in my son’s terms, but that’s not helpful. Is it 1960s slang? Is it German slang – this is based on a German novel. I just want to know. They use it like it’s just this common accepted term and I honestly have never heard anyone use it again or since.

   Other than that, I think I would enjoy this movie when I was younger. A bunch of kids foiling a bank robbery? That does seem kind of fun. The villains are intimidating, but just goofy enough to not be threatening. But all I thought this entire time was – when will it end? Who allows these children out like this in bombed out ruins and doesn’t seem to care? Why doesn’t anyone use Pony’s journalistic abilities to maybe figure out who they’re dealing with? Why include the older sister whose only focus is to talk to boys other than momentary comedy relief? Though I suppose in that instance it’s enough.

   All Bob saw was Nazis. “Oh they reused the old uniform, Doc!” “That guy was definitely one before the Cold War.” “I bet he was in the SS.”

   I want to be very clear here, Bob was at no point accusing any of the actual actors of being former members of the Nazi party. But this film does take place in West Germany, clearly very close to the post WWII era, and these characters would have survived that regime. I mean, they spend most of the film in a not yet dealt with bombed out ruin! Let’s be honest, we all know what war caused that bombing, and even more specifically why Germany was bombed.

   Other than the post-WWII allure, Bob also had no interest in this film. It was, actually, a fight to keep him focused at all. We got some new aquatic snails, which is his obsession, and he keeps track of them all, and writes about them in this slide show presentation. Anyways, he spent most of the film making a pretend family tree for them. I understand that this sounds insane, but he’s a creative person and mystery snails are kind of cute? They keep our tanks clean anyways. It was only for the last 20 minutes that I could keep him in any way focused and mostly that was just because he suddenly decided he liked Gustav.

   Can I also just say, Gustav is clearly a little homeless boy, an orphan from the war, and everyone just seems cool with that? All the other kids in the detective agency have homes to go to. But not Gustav. He’s out there trying to make money. He knew no one would care if he spent a stormy night at the ruins. I want resolution for Gustav, I want him adopted into Emil’s family. But maybe that’s just the mother in me?

   You could pass this movie up, and ultimately, unless you’re around the age of 6-12 and living in the early 1960s, I would.