Le Gang des champions

It manages to capture the fitting atmosphere of a dusty summer boy's adventure on a small pitch behind the house. But the movie is ruined by unreasonable length (especially the sequence with escapades around getting the ball clearly called for a striking cut sequence and not for more than fifteen minutes of footage), unbalanced performances of children (the central trio did good job, but the rest of them are just a make weight) and with the horribly written unbearably intrusive voiceover of the narrator (the director himself), who is also completely useless, because everything you hear, the child viewer (let alone adult) knows, sees or derives. It wouldn't have been any better if little Scotty had told the story, but at least it would have made sense. The result is a movie that today can only stand the test if watched by children's eyes or while wearing tight-fitting nostalgic glasses (if you got to it at the right age) and not on its own. (16/09/2017)