Famous Five (film)

Famous Five (Fünf Freunde) is a 2012 German children's film. Directed by Mike Marzuk, it is a film adaptation of The Famous Five series by Enid Blyton, which is based primarily on the 1947 book Five on Kirrin Island Again.

Plot
Siblings Julian, Dick and Anne plan to stay at their uncle Quentin's house for some days. Quentin, on the other hand, is preparing to travel to Kirrin Island ("Felseninsel") to concentrate on his research. Nearby, someone secretly takes pictures of him.

Georgina "George" Kirrin, Quentin's daughter, is forced to go cycling with her cousins and decides to take them to the "Teufelsfelsen" (Devil's Rock). En route, she has a race with Julian. George wins by tricking Julian, who says it is no wonder that she has no friends. She leaves them and cycles to the harbour to say goodbye to her father.

At Teufelsfelsen, the siblings hear a dog barking and enter a cave, ignoring a sign that says "stay out, dangerous" in the process. Julian spots the dog, Timmy, at the bottom of a hole and climbs down to recue him. With a rope, Dick and Anne try to pull Julian up but cannot hold his weight. They nearly drop him when George appears and helps them pull. She then thanks them for saving Timmy.

Together, they examine the cave and find a radio transmitter with a voice distortion device. They listen and answer to someone saying "It's about time we take care of the professor. Let's hope he co-operates." After finding a map of Kirrin Island, they realize someone is after Quentin. At the police station, they convince officers Peters and Hansen to accompany them to the cave. Inside, the radio is gone, and there is no evidence that there ever was one. The children get a fine for illegally entering the cave. George is blamed of this by her mother but defended by the others who decide to share the blame.

George tries to convince her mother that Quentin is in danger, to no avail. Quentin is secretly developing a technique to produce electricity with plants. The friends decide to unmask the people threatening him. The next morning, they sneak out of the house to investigate the cave. Timmy is banned from George's house, as he accidentally destroyed parts of Quentin's work and now lives with Mrs. Miller, a neighbour of the Kirrins. On the way to the cave, Anne notices someone installing a camera to spy on Kirrin Island. It is the man who was photographing Quentin.



He turns out to be Peter Turner, an agent from a European secret service. His agency is surveilling Quentin, who refuses to receive help from them. Turner decides to examine the cave and is attacked there. Examining a piece of paper Dick picked up in the cave earlier, George finds the imprint of a signature. The friends decide to find its author. Dick's plan is to get a signature from everyone in the village and compare it with the one they have.

While collecting signatures for a fake ecological campaign, Anne learns that a couple of birdwatching aficionados wants to visit Kirrin Island. With that information and not having found any matching signatures by then, the friends investigate the couple, who have a hovercraft capable of bringing them to Kirrin Island. The couple also has a pocketbook the children have seen in the cave earlier.

While George and Anne distract the couple, Julian and Dick get on the vehicle to sabotage it.

Accidentally, they start the hovercraft and crash, destroying it and everything on it. The couple, however, turn out to be real bird watchers and not criminals.

Because of this, the siblings' father orders them to go home. Later, George reads the fine they got for illegally entering the cave. Taking a look at Hansen's signature, she realizes it is the one they were looking for.



The next morning, Hansen enters the cave. George and Timmy follow him into an undersea tunnel that leads directly to Kirrin Island. At Quentin's lab, George finds her father captured by Peters.

Peters and Hansen have purposely set the friends on the wrong track so that they suspected the bird watchers. Hansen captures George, and Quentin promises to surrender his invention if they promise not to hurt her. George is locked up with Turner in a cell under the lab, while Timmy runs out of the cave and after the bus carrying the siblings home. The trio see Timmy and stop the bus, realising George is in danger.

In the lab, Peters and Hansen force Quentin to copy all the data onto their hard-drive. Following Timmy through the tunnel, the siblings get to George's cell, and the Five are reunited. Together, they subdue Hansen.

In the lab, Peters gets the hard-drive and destroys Quentin's computer but gets trapped by the Five, who lock him up with Hansen.



Mrs. Miller, who appears on the island, is actually Hansen and Peters's boss. She activates a bomb's timer and locks the Five up with Hansen and Peters, not willing to share profits with anybody.

With the help of Turner, the friends defuse the bomb. Timmy brings back the hard-drive and is allowed to stay in the house. The villains are brought to prison by Turner, who thanks the Five for their help and promises his agency will compensate the bird watchers for their troubles. When asked how he should call them in his report, the children announce themselves as the Famous Five.

Background
Most parts of the movie were filmed in Schleswig, Germany, in summer 2011. Marcus Harris, the actor of Julian in the 1970s TV series The Famous Five, plays a concierge. Its premiere was on 26 January 2012 in Munich and a second in Schleswig, few days later. The film was invited to the 2012 TIFF Kids International Film Festival in Toronto.