Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

This movie is based on a contemporary children's book, not the usual Grimm Brothers stock. Hans Röckle is a puppeteer, inventor, blacksmith and more. He is challenged by the Devil (in almost a dozen fancy costumes) who offers him even more inventiveness, against his soul should he ever make money with an invention, build something twice, or cease inventing for 7*7 hours.The inventions help his fellow men: an automatic sewing kit (fancy animation), a weather-controlling flute. However, the contract with the devil had a clause that the devil can take any invention as plaything for his mother. But even without devil's intervention, the things often have less than desirable effects on people's lives. Roeckle has seen the country of "Tomorrow & Aftertomorrow" in a magic telescope, where poverty and illness are overcome, somehow a communist paradise... so he brings his inventions there, with his amazing Time Boots.While leaning on fairy tale standards, this story unfolds quite nicely and somewhat surprisingly. I found it very worthwhile watching. Pity the bizarre puppets weren't shown more often :^)