TKKG und die rätselhafte Mind-Machine (2006) Reviews

• Unsatisfying, comes short in most departments

  Horst_In_Translation2017-09-09

  "TKKG und die rätselhafte Mind-Machine" or "TKKG: The Secret of the Mysterious Mind Machine" or "TKKG and the Mysterious Mind Machine" is a German kids film from 2006, so this one had its 10th anniversary already last year. It was directed by Tomy Wigand and written by Marco Petry. TKKG were famous for a long time here in Germany, but after the death of creator Rolf Kalmuczak, the popularity obviously declined considerably and this film is the most recent take on the four detective kids and yeah well, it is not really recent anymore. You also see this if you see little Jannis Niewöhner in here, but the cast also includes a handful of actors who were already famous back then like Noethen, Vogel, Hain or von Lüttichau. So yeah kids film were already a star magnet a decade ago here in Germany and they still are today. But despite all these solid names, it probably wasn't enough of a success because they made no sequel afterward and that's perfectly fine. It's not better than the other TKKG film from the 1990s and probably also not better than the series. The TKKG hype may have been over back in 2006 already. But admittedly the story also has several weaknesses. The main antagonist was bland and boring, the story was more on the nonsense side than anywhere near good fantasy or sci-fi action. The Mind-Machine referenced in the title never really turned out interesting. The film was way too long for its own good at over 110 minutes. And most importantly, the kids were disappointing. I wouldn't say I grew up with TKKG, but from what I remember the fat boy was much funnier originally than in this film. The other two boys were more annoying and irritating than important and the girl was also relatively forgettable. The IMDb rating is accurate as this was not a good movie, nothing you or your kids really need to see. Watch something else instead.