Lovely book. Lovely film. 1 odd niggle

Rating: 6/10 (9 March 2014)

Today I saw The Book Thief. I really liked the book so I was hoping for good things from the film. It's nice to be able to report that it was a good adaptation. If my memory of the book serves me correctly then it was a fairly faithful translation to the screen. The cast were really good and the sets were excellent. I guess that the little village was a set and not real but it looked wonderful. The cast was fabulous. Who wouldn't want Geoffrey Rush putting reading them a book at bedtime? The younger players were great too. It did sag a little in the middle and could have been trimmed a touch but overall I enjoyed it.
I have one odd niggle with the film - It is set in Germany and all the characters are German so why did they need to speak English with German accents? It wasn't a problem but it just strikes me as odd. Also, they would occasionally use common German references like "Dummkopf" but this wasn't consistent as Geoffrey Rush uses the phrase "God in Heaven" at one point and not "Gott in Himmel". There is a lot of writing in the film, on advertisements, books and newspapers and it's all in German, all apart from the girl's dictionary on the cellar walls which she writes in English. This inconsistency with the language does not spoil the film for me but I do find it puzzling.
Overall - good movie