Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic acting
Review: is about all I can say in favor of this film. David Bennent, the child star, in particular gave a magnificent performance. Unfortunately, the film itself left a bad taste in my mouth.To those reviewers who keep claiming that Oskar deliberately chose to stop growing in protest to Hitler and his Nazis, what film were YOU watching? It seems to me that people are grasping at straws to come up with the idea that Oskar was staging some sort of heroic, idealistic protest, when he did nothing of the sort. He was a sociopath. More than once during the movie, I kept thinking of Children of the Corn, or Chucky. Oskar was a creepy, sinister character, and it amazes me how people will persist in ignoring the facts and convincing themselves that he was a bright, innocent hero, just because he was a small child with big eyes. The film had its charms and I can truthfully say that I was fascinated by it, but in the end I can't say I've gained anything from it but disturbing images and nausea. Just when you think you can't be phased by anything anymore, considering all the violence and sex in the media these days, you come across a movie like this. It seems like the director's gone out of his way to come up with things so disgusting, your mind would never have been able to imagine it on its own. And to add insult to injury, I still can't begin to fathom a meaning behind it all. If I'm going to be shown such things, I'd at least like them to have a point; in the Tin Drum, a lot of the more disgusting scenes seemed purely gratuitous. I have a hard time believing this movie won an Academy Award. Either the competition was truly horrible, or it's come to the point where bizarre and grotesque = high art. I realize that some people think art should be subtle and cryptic, but at the same time, slapping an artsy label on something doesn't make it acceptable.
Rating: 
Summary: Weird but rivetting
Review: It's hard to know exactly what the author wanted to say but the film is memorable, there's no denying it. And that's thanks largely to the near-miraculous discovery of David Bennent. It almost seems as though the book was written with him in mind for the movie. I'm sorry to find out that the film only depicts about half of the book. I wish they had continued with a second part.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible Movie
Review: My husband and I both thought 10 minutes into this movie that we had already sat through 2 hours of it...that tells you how truly bad it is. If you enjoy the sounds of a child shreaking and beating a toy drum then this movie is for you. I go to the movie to be entertained but this was not one for that. Having seen several "art" movies over the years, I can honestly say this one is the worst.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping!
Review: Read "The Tin Gun" when I was much younger. Found italmost incomprenensible! The movie,with excellentlyexecuted sub-titles,was cohesive, coherent,andclarifying. Probably bomb in today's vacuous boxoffice. Nevertheless, a memorable film incisivelyrevealing the easy victoryNazism achieved in pre-World War II Danzig andGermany.
Rating: 
Summary: An Allegory of Germany
Review: Schlondorff brought a superb cast together to tell the story of Oskar, who ceases to grow beyond his three year old size; a symbolic representation of Germany in the twentieth century. Oskar's mother is courted by a German and a Pole. Gunther Grass's allegorical solution to the wrenching of national borders and ethnic shuffling brought about by World War I is to show the mother, unable to choose between her lovers, choosing them both. One becomes the father of Oskar. Which one? Does it matter? Thus Oskar arrives amidst the confusion of the twenties, only to witness the degradation of the homeland by revolution, runaway inflation and finally, the steady growth of National Socialism through the thirties. Oskar mirrors the turmoil of Germany's struggle of the twentieth century, unable to free itself from its own dream of Teutonic superiority, unable to find peace in the national soul. View this work with an eye to the inadequacies of your own country and begin to see Gunter Grass's dilemma with his.
Rating:
Summary: BRAVISSIMO, MIO PICCOLO UOMO!!!
Review: SUPERB!!!
the novel won Nobel prize and the film is so grande it won both Oscar for best foreign language film and Palm d'Or at Cannes!
i can believe there are people who gave this magnificent film less than 4 stars.
Rating:
Summary: THERE ARE NO WORDS TO HONOR IT
Review: Take in the consideration that there are only a few movies that are memorable if you think about it other than a Tv show or cartoon or something along those lines that you could find to have etched into your mind that when you were only 9 or 10 when you first saw but" should not have been watching" but was so GREAT that you remember in detail the scenes and can still visually see what occured there simply are no words to honor it.
Rating:
Summary: I love the sound of breaking glass ...
Review: The book is a classic tome of course and this film can qualify for that accolade as well. To completely follow the original, the film would have to have been about twice as long, and the film is nearly two-and-a-half hours long as it is! As has been already mentioned, the latter part of the story, after the end of the war, is omitted. The other thing is that the film doesn't have the time to explore each of the characters in Oskar's world that the book does, all those in the tenement building. In fact some of the more graphic elements of the book, such as the shop owner hanging himself - one death Oskar wasn't responsible for - are omitted. Charles Aznavour, who plays the Jewish toy shop owner, from where Oskar gets his tin drums, has his French voice dubbed into German, which was a bit distracting. If you are looking for a syrupy 'feelgood movie' or a conventional war story, look elsewhere. For a surreal account of a child's view of a wartime world with very black humour, this is essential viewing.
Rating:
Summary: Very good film of the book
Review: The novel "Die Blechtrommel" (The Tin Drum) is one of the greatest books in world literature and certainly in German literature. It is no wonder then that Gunter Grass won the nobel prize for literature a few years ago.
It is part of the Danzig trilogy but certainly his best. This movie I think is a good as it gets compared to a book that has a lot of pages. I don't know if the other books have been made into a movie.
It has certainly helped that Grass himself worked on the movie and could therefore retain the powerwul literary elements. The story is complex but beautiful. The little boy Oscar does not know who his father is; is he a German or a Pole? A distinction which in interbellum Danzig is important, since it a mainly German town in Polish territory. He gets a Tin Drum which he carries with him all the time, leading many people into ruin, including his own mother and possible father.
He jumps off a stairway one day, blames someone else and stops growing as a protest. He also developed the skill to use his voice to break glass, something which later let's him get a job with a travelling group led by a dwarf named Bebra, to me the most fascinating character in both book and film. To hide himself from the world he sometimes hides underneath his grandmothers skirt.
There are some great references to important things in German history and Polish history, which is so often intertwined. The boy playing Oscar has eyes which really are scary, just as they are supposed to be. Sometimes it is filmed as an old slapstick movie with people that move a little too fast and although there is probably a reason, I didn't think it added something.
This movie is so rich as it can be and it will definitely show John Irving fans where he got his biggest influence (something he always readily admits). There are dwarfs (Hotel New Hampshire, Son of the Circus,), historical events and horrible disasters and strange loves. Owen Meany is a very similar character.
Read the book of course but the movie is also definitely worth watching as a thinner version of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Thought-Provoking And Magnetic
Review: The Tin Drum is a movie that you can watch more than once and find something new each time. One of the best films I've seen and the cast does an excellent job; especially the boy who plays little Oskar. A movie that deals with many things, and truly is worth a viewing from anyone that likes films that make you think.
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