The Magic Flute
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"The Magic Flute" is an opera written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but I'm not really familiar with that. This movie is not a straight-up adaptation of the opera. It begins with a teenage boy named Tim Walker going to visit his dad in the hospital. His father gives him a book he had taken from his alma mater years ago, a boarding school that he wants Tim to attend. After his father dies, Tim goes to the school, which is named after Mozart. On the train heading to the school, he meets another student named Sophie. Once he arrives at Mozart's, he is assigned a roommate, Paolo, who is bullied by other students, the main one being a boy named Anton. On his first night at the school, Tim goes to the library around 3 AM, and returns the book his father had given him to a space between other books in a grandfather clock. He's then transported to a fantasy world, where he is required to play out the story of the opera, as Prince Tamino. He meets a guy named Papageno, and the two of them are tasked with rescuing the daughter of the Queen of the Night, who has been kidnapped. Throughout the adventure, Tim is occasionally transported back to his own world when he hears the clock ticking. Well, Tim slowly becomes closer to Paolo, as well as to Sophie. And in the fantasy world, he and Papageno soon meet Princess Pamina, and rescue her from a guy named Monostatos, who I think is like the captain of the guard. He works for a sorcerer named Sarastro, whom Pamina's mother wants her to kill, but Pamina doesn't want to.

And lots more stuff happens, in both worlds. I don't feel the need to detail any more of the plot. Honestly, I think the plot was kind of scattered and unclear, a lot of the time. The singing was good, but I couldn't always make out all the words (especially from the Queen of the Night). A lot of little things didn't really make sense to me, though at least the real world made more sense than the fantasy world. Anyway, I'm sort of glad to have seen the movie, but I don't know if I'd actually recommend it to anyone else. I certainly don't think I'd ever want to watch it again. It's not bad, it's just... weird. (And I'm of two minds about whether it's a good sort of weird or not.) Oh yeah, I also wanted to say that the titular flute had surprisingly little to do with the story.