“The Magic Flute” (2023) follows Londoner Tim (Jack Wolfe) as he fulfills his dying father’s wish to attend a fictional mountaintop boarding school six weeks after the academic year starts and return a book of music that his father stole when he was a student there. On his first night, balls of giggling, speaking light beckons him to return the book to its shelf, which acts as a portal to the world of Mozart’s last opera, “Die Zauberflote,” with Tim adopting the persona of the opera’s protagonist, Prince Tamino, to save that world and get his greatest wish fulfilled. If he fails, he will get trapped in that world as eternal darkness engulfs it. As Tim alternates between worlds, he gains confidence to achieve his dream of becoming a singer like his dad and getting his one true love. You would figure that his greatest wish would be for his father to live, but maybe Tim knows about Monkey’s Paw wishes.
I did not want to see “The Magic Flute,” but it needed to be reviewed so I volunteered for the assignment. Its most attractive feature is the kernel of hope that the film would live up to the stunt casting of F. Murray Abraham, best known for his Oscar starring role in “Amadeus” (1984), who plays Longbow, the stern headmaster and the father of a teen girl that Tim meets on his way to the school, Sophie (Niamh McCormack), but only ardent fans should watch the film for this reason. Even if I did not know that Abraham was eighty-four (they made his hair brown for this film), suspension of disbelief begins to strain since Sophie and her alleged father barely share a scene together, and I am going to need the back story of why she has an Irish accent, and he does not, or vice versa. Mick Jagger walked so Salieri could run.
“The Magic Flute” tells two stories. Tim’s experiences at the boarding school act as a narrative framing device to segue to an adaptation of the opera. If it was a straight adaptation of the opera, maybe it could have worked as a fantasy adventure, but the filmmakers’ choice of protagonist shows a cynical lack of confidence in viewers to embrace a straight adaptation and try to lure butts in the seat with a more familiar, derivative, half-baked high school story. Think “Glee” meets “Harry Potter,” and I like musicals, but it helps if the kids can sing. A musical should make viewers want to buy the soundtrack, but the Internet won’t slow down because of downloads. They alternate between the Jackson 5’s greatest hits and the titular opera translated into English. I love the Jackson 5, but is that what kids are really listening to nowadays?
When Tim is not the center of attention, other supporting characters get centerstage, but would have been better left on the cutting room floor. There is the bullied roommate who is implied to be persecuted for being gay, but the film is too scared to meet it head on and punks out by making it into collective pressure to perform and depression. His bully, the poor little rich boy, is the son of a famous singer who wants to be a drummer. These stories are dull, and the film grinds to a boring halt during these segments.
Instead the alternating undermines both stories, because the high school story is lackluster compared to the opera’s dramatics, and the opera’s melodramatic story suffers when we compare it to modern sensibilities. I never thought about the opera’s actual story, but it is messed up. It is supposed to be a good thing that Sarastro kidnaps the Queen of the Night’s daughter, Pamina, and charges a rapey Monostatos to be her guard. And it would be bad for Pamina to kill her kidnapper. Um, ok. At least the music is better in the opera sections although most of those performances fall short of theatrical performances except for Sabine Devieilhe who plays the Queen. Her scenes also have the best visual effects reminiscent of clothes that billow forth like the robes of a martial artist. The travelling between worlds just ruins the momentum of the opera’s story, which at least is dynamic. I also was annoyed that the portal seems to reset every generation. Is Tim part of a long line of chosen Prince Paminos? Is it genetic, which is why his father could go through the portal? Or is it related to talent since Mozart is presumably the first one to go through the portal? The movie never considers any of the framing’s sci-fi implications.
If Wolfe was a more magnetic actor, maybe he could have tied the worlds together, but I just kept thinking that I wished that a young Grant Gustin could have played Tim. Wolfe is playing a tentative young man, but at the end of his journey, you will need a microscope to see a transformation. Also making Tim lose his father just seems like a cheap trick to make viewers sympathize with him, but it does not work. He becomes the love interest for Sophie and Pamina (Asha Banks), which makes him sketchy though he prefers Sophie, but when Sophie flirts with him, it initially feels more like disdain. There is no chemistry in any configuration.
Banks is the best young actor and is reminiscent of Jennifer Connolly in “Labyrinth” (1986). A better reimagining of the story would have been to focus on Pamina. Stefan Konarske, who plays Monostatos, seems to have modeled his performance on Principal Arthur Savage (Paul Kaye) in “Anna and the Apocalypse” (2017). Iwan Rheon, who usually plays villains or ambiguous, strange characters in “Misfits” and “Game of Thrones,” delights as Papageno, the Queen’s bird catcher and Prince Tamino’s traveling companion who yearns for a wife. There is not a hint of ill intent in his performance, just wide-eyed innocence. When Papageno meets his soulmate Papagena (Stefi Celma), their rendition of “Pa-, pa-, -pa” has the same energy as the original and real sparks fly at finding each other.
Other than the Queen of the Night, there are no mothers in “The Magic Flute,” only fathers. Tim mentions his mother, but no other child does. We see Tim’s dying father’s, Sophie’s, the little drummer boy. Sarastro and Pamina agree that the Queen of the Night is an unsuitable mother. WTF. Of all the things to carry over from Mozart’s story, the theme of unsuitable or absent mothers feels a little misogynistic, a weird male fantasy where you can have romantic relationships with women then they evaporate upon having children.
The bloated fantasy musical meets high school coming of age adventure film needed to pick a lane, preferably the one that existed for hundreds of years, cast a better singer as the protagonist and shorten the runtime to make it appealing. While the CGI is passable, the giant snake feels as if it will age as well as the effects in “Clash of the Titans” (1981) so maybe the high school story is more achievable, even with “Independence Day” producer Roland Emmerich working behind the camera, but then it would be a bore. Better an uneven visual feast than a trite story. Skip it.