REVIEWED - THIEF LORDDOES anybody remember the Children's Film Foundation? Back in the 1970s this undoubtedly well-meaning body used to churn out endless, tedious films in which gangs of orphans defied continuity catastrophes to solve crimes on a minuscule budget. The pictures, like Rum Babas and scouting, were devised by men who had no idea what children actually enjoyed. Find me a middle-aged man who, at that age, preferred, say, Flash the Sheep Dog to Dr Who and I'll show you a lunatic, writes Donald Clarke

All of which brings us to the profoundly bizarre Thief Lord. Based on a novel by one Cornelia Funke, the German-financed film follows a bunch of, yes, orphans, resident in a disused Venetian cinema, as they seek to track down an ancient artefact that holds the secret of eternal youth (I think).

Along the way, they encounter various people from British telly and, most extraordinarily, Vanessa Redgrave, who, though mercifully clothed throughout, seems to be playing the same deranged nun she portrayed in Ken Russell's The Devils.

The atrocious dialogue has that dysfunctional quality you get from electronic translation machines. The performances are uniformly dreadful. And the special effects would shame the producers of a primary school pantomime. Come back CFF. All is forgiven.