Sadly Over-hyped

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

it is easy to criticize it. because it is dusty, too childish, strange for our time. but it remains seductive. for ballet, for old cartoon characters, for the easy moral, for the mark of Gopo and as last part of adventures of the girls. a film who use the TV only as excuse for a large, nice joke. not same charming beauty of the first part but a decent work, interesting for discover the manner to create the magic with poor tools in last years of Romanian Communism. an interesting film. not high ambitions but nice entertainment. and that detail is real important in that case. because the fake skin of script, dialogs and , maybe, acting, is not the axis of a travel in a slice from lovely childhood. so, a nice work. not the best. but seductive in a special manner and good occasion for the kids from yesterday to meet old emotions.

This film is a beautiful ending for Ion Popescu Gopo's film career. Childish, indeed, but charming SF-fairy tale about two little girls getting lost in a fabulous world inside a TV. I remember I saw this film in 1989, when I was 7. TV was important for me those days, because it was the source for thousands of daydreams, i.e. films and cartoons (all of which I saw on video cassettes). Gopo could foresee the impact that television would soon have on young people, so from this point of view, his movie is in a league with Spielberg's "Poltergeist", only a fairy-tale version instead of a horror. Gopo died later in 1989, but before the Revolution broke in December. He never saw Romania turning against oppression and fighting for real freedom, but maybe he didn't need that. He was free in the first place, because he was an artist.

Not a very good sequel. The first movie was set in a beautiful magical forest and the second one is set in a weird electronic land of transistors and it looks as bad as it sounds. Maria and Mirabela are played by different girls this time and their acting is much more childish. The music, courtesy of Eugen Doga, is still beautiful though. And the animation is still nice. It might be worth watching for having a healthy laugh at Romanian escapism and for the good message of doing something good with your life instead of wasting time, but the plot is too childish and this movie doesn't bring up good nostalgia, like the first "Maria, Mirabela". But hey, little children might enjoy it ...