Jack Wolfe, Asha Banks, and Morris Robinson in “The Magic Flute”. Photo Credit: Shout! Factory/Shout! Studios
At first glance, Mozart’s The Magic Flute doesn’t really seem like the kind of story primed for the modern-day fantasy treatment. And to tell you the truth, it’s not. After all, The Magic Flute is a very old-fashioned sort of melodramatic story. One that doesn’t really mesh all that well with a very Harry Potter/Chronicles of Narnia brand of fantasy. And yet Florian Sigl’s new adaptation of Mozart’s famous opera somehow defies all logic, escaping the binds of mid-2000s fantasy tropes and becoming something quite remarkable. While the movie’s framing device feels overly familiar, once it embraces the over-the-top majesty of the opera, things genuinely take flight and become something, dare I say it, magical.
Plot
When Tim Walker (Jack Wolfe) arrives at a prestigious music boarding school, misery waits around every corner. A standoffish headmaster (F. Murray Abraham), unpleasant classmates, and impending auditions for the school’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Life for Tim seems fairly hopeless. Until he accidentally stumbles across a portal that transports him directly into the world of Mozart’s famous opera. A world that offers Tim the chance to finally take the reins of his life and figure out who he wants to be. For if he can survive the world of The Magic Flute, following the story to its final notes, he just might get all that he’s ever wanted. There’s just one problem – Tim can only visit the world of The Magic Flute in short bursts, in the dead of night. Not exactly a winning formula for a student, after all.
Overall, The Magic Flute is a really strange film. It splits its time between being a surprisingly faithful adaptation of Mozart’s opera and a very generic, fantasy-tinged coming-of-age story. On paper, those two halves could have formed a pretty interesting whole. And they almost do. Unfortunately, the movie never really manages to pull that balance off. Each plotline distracts from the other, despite director Sigl and screenwriters Andrew Lowery, Jason Young, and David White’s best efforts. On the one hand, Tim’s school antics, complete with all the requisite coming-of-age tropes, never go anywhere. And on the other hand, the movie doesn’t fully commit to adapting Mozart’s opera, frequently cutting away from that plotline every time it gets going. It’s hard to say who this movie’s even for. But what I will say is that every time it commits to adapting Mozart’s opera, things start getting interesting.
A Journey Headfirst Into Opera
Unsurprisingly, the most interesting aspect of The Magic Flute is the way it adapts Mozart’s classic opera. Watching the trailer, you get that sense that you’re in for yet another generic fantasy film; a cross between Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia. But instead, Sigl delivers a proper staging of this opera. Like, it’s actually an opera – complete with the majority of Mozart’s beloved arias wholly intact, sung quite impressively by the film’s actors. True, Sigl and the writers truncate a great deal of the opera’s original libretto, but it’s remarkably impressive how much of the story remains. Honestly, it’s baffling that the film’s marketing has largely hidden the movie’s most interesting aspect – that it’s genuinely a musical. But on the other hand, that moment of joyous surprise I had when Tim first started singing makes that deception entirely worth it.
If you’re unfamiliar with the opera’s plot, here’s a basic rundown. The Queen of the Night (Sabine DeVieilhe) tasks Prince Tamino (Wolfe) and Papageno (Iwan Rheon) with saving her daughter (Asha Banks) from the “evil demon”, Sarastro (Morris Robinson). But along the way, Tamino and Papageno discover all may not be as it seems in this world. It’s a story full of action, magic, and romance. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t really do a great job telling the opera’s story. Every time things really get going, the movie grinds to a halt as the action returns to the “real world”. But when the movie really focuses on The Magic Flute, it comes alive. And the actors here do quite an impressive job with the opera’s music – especially Wolfe, Rheon, and DeVielhe. I’ve never been a huge fan of The Magic Flute, but this movie might’ve just made me one.
A Distracting Framing Device
While the film’s retelling of Mozart’s beloved opera proves genuinely breathtaking, the same can’t really be said for its framing device. Put simply, it just doesn’t work. On the one hand, I understand what Sigl was going for. Ostensibly, the framing device is here to ground the film’s more fantastical elements. It’s the movie’s equivalent of Narnia’s earlier scenes in the Professor’s house. The problem here is that this plotline just isn’t all that interesting. It’s a collection of familiar coming-of-age tropes, all thrown into a mixer. And since the Magic Flute stuff takes up so much of the movie’s runtime, there’s not enough time left to develop any of these characters (none of whom, save for Tim, appear in the Magic Flute parts of the film) or their storylines. So, all of these scenes end up dragging the movie’s momentum to a grinding halt.
The first twenty minutes of the film are an absolute drag until Tim ends up in the Magic Flute world. And then every fifteen or twenty minutes, the movie yanks him out of that far more interesting storyline, only to return him to this far less interesting one. To be fair, Sigl does a decent job connecting the two storylines, with the Magic Flute story boosting Tim’s self-confidence so he can better connect with his peers and properly grow up in the “real world”. And both storylines build nicely to a fairly satisfying conclusion. But all of these scenes just distract from the film’s far more interesting, and enjoyable, adaptation of Mozart’s opera. Perhaps if more of the characters from the framing device appeared in the Magic Flute segments, this problem could’ve been avoided. But as it is, the framing device distracts more than it enhances.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, The Magic Flutes ends up being less than the sum of its parts. There are two plotlines, each battling for dominance here. One offers a very familiar rehash of generic fantasy and coming-of-age tropes. And the other delivers a far more enjoyable adaptation of Mozart’s beloved opera. I understand Sigl’s desire to try and make this nearly 300-year-old opera more accessible to a modern audience. But I can’t imagine anyone who’s a fan of the opera is gonna enjoy the coming-of-age framing device. And I’m not convinced anyone who’s a big fan of coming-of-age movies will enjoy the Magic Flute parts.
With all of that said, The Magic Flute is more enjoyable than it isn’t – especially when it’s Magic Flute-ing it up. All of the actors in The Magic Flute segments really embrace the over-the-top nature of the opera. And everyone sings the score remarkably well. It’s easily worth a watch if you’re at all familiar with the opera, as it does deliver a fairly fun retelling of this classic story. I just wish it would’ve dropped most of the framing device and more fully embraced being a modern production of the opera.
The Magic Flute debuts in theaters on March 10.
While its two halves distract from one another, Florian Sigl’s new adaptation of "The Magic Flute" is more magical than mundane. The framing device offers little beyond well-worn coming-of-age tropes, but the parts of the film that adapt Mozart's beloved opera overcome the odds and deliver something genuinely impressive.
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GVN Rating 7
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