Michael Ende’s Momo has a premise that needs little updating to feel relevant: people losing their lives to the demand to save time. Momo, a child living in an old amphitheatre, offers something the grey men cannot value properly: attention. The question of how we spend our limited hours remains powerful. The 2025 film does not consistently find the right form for it.
The production is visibly ambitious. Large images and digital effects give the story a modern fantasy scale, sometimes impressively. But Ende’s novel is a poetic parable rather than a blueprint for action spectacle. Whenever the film prioritises movement and display, it loses some of the stillness that should make the story special.
Alexa Goodall gives Momo curiosity and empathy, although the screenplay sometimes pushes her towards a conventional heroic role. Martin Freeman brings presence to Master Hora but receives surprisingly little opportunity to deepen it. The supporting figures also need more room. A story about pausing should have the confidence to pause, rather than hurry through another narrative station.
The film is moving when friendship grows quiet and daily life becomes grey under work and efficiency. Too often, however, it explains or illustrates that emptiness instead of trusting us to feel it. Its tone shifts between threatening darkness and a sterile blockbuster neatness, leaving the playful warmth underdeveloped.
There is value in making these ideas accessible to a young audience, and the images can be striking. But relevance and production effort cannot replace emotional enchantment. I give Momo 3 out of 5 stars. It is an ambitious, mixed adaptation that asks important questions and only intermittently finds the magic to carry them.