Kästner und der kleine Dienstag

Just watched this, having recently watched the five or so brilliant Kästner films about children (and animals) made between 1931 and 1954 plus the animated 1969 "Konferenz der Tiere." All those films have children and adults speaking intelligently and enunciating the dialog, which is of course the whole point, Kästner being one of the great writers of the 20th century. I've lived and worked in a German-speaking country for 44 years. Watching this film made me feel like all those years were erased, and I was hearing a foreign language for the first time. Not one sentence could I understand. At least half of the words were garbled, mumbled, slurred over, or spoken with such a thick Berlin accent that they were undecipherable. I believe the film had something important to say, and I'll probably try again with the German subtitles turned on.