THE ELFKINS - BAKING A DIFFERENCE
Germany, 2020, 78 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Ute von Munchow- Pohl
Sitting there, looking up at the screen, enjoying Elkins.
So, this is what it is like to be six (or, perhaps, four-five or, indeed, seven)! Elf characters up there, carrying on in a comic way, a spirited young Elfie wanting to get out of the Elfkins’ underground home and meet with humans who are thought to be terrible and hateful creatures.
Presumably the audience – and even the adult audience, even the reviewer audience – did not know that under the city of Cologne, there are these minuscule characters, once dedicated to helping humans but expelled from the city 200 years ago by an angry housefrau!
The subtitle of the film is “Baking a Difference�. Elfie really wants to win the Elkins’ competition for the best creation or invention, to wear The Special Victory. And, after she ventures up, two of her companions along with her, a genial bearded elf and a rather prissy young boy, and after they are harassed by a nasty dog, they discover their goal in life: a cake shop with its own bakery!
Age 6, watching a lively and colourful cartoon, with detail after detail and picture after picture of extremely sweet-toothed cakes, icing, strawberries, and Elfie and her friends using their ingenuity to set up old toys as a mini a assembly line to bake the cakes, we are in cinema heaven!
Of course, old Theo who has fallen on hard times as a baker, is a bit of a grouch, but nothing compared with his ambitious brother with whom he has fallen out (and the brother owns that dog!). The Elkins succeed with the cakes and customers cram the shop, there is still the problem of the old brother and his shop and the younger brother and his ambitions to demolish the shop and build a factory.
Age 6, the film runs her just over 70 minutes, just enough time to enjoy it, not to start to wriggle, happily finish – and, perhaps, with a resolution that one of these times, it would be good to watch again! (Children happy for 70 minutes, parents bliss!)
