Bibi & Tina

The exaggerated and cartoonish action is clearly meant to entertain, but there isn't much entertainment going on here. Adults dress in loud colors and unmatched plaids as if to signal that fun is to be had, but don't expect dialogue, plot, or characters to back that up in Bibi & Tina. Characters burst into song and dance here unexpectedly. In one case a farmhand in an unbuttoned plaid shirt storms out of a barn playing an electric guitar and singing. The assumed audience would be difficult to determine as Alex utters "s--t," but for the most part this feels like an attempt to target Wizards of Waverly Place viewers, although that TV show is far more funny, clever, and well-written, not to mention a showcase for good actors.

It may also be difficult to understand from the poorly-constructed script that the Count's ancestral home is a riding school and the wealthy and aristocratic Sophia arrives not as a friend of the family but as a student. Weirdest of all is that this German-language offering is not only dubbed into English but also features English subtitles and, oddly, the spoken words don't always match with the subtitled ones. Is someone a "mule," or a "pigheaded thing"? Is there a "storm" or "inclement weather"? Is a place "trashy" or "crappy"? Is it a "mess" or is it "nonsense"? A few actors mispronounce the word for a young horse, "foal" (rhymes with roll), as if it were a kind of chicken (fowl). But, if nothing else, the movie offers beautiful sequences of horses galloping majestically across country landscapes.