Küss mich, Frosch (2000)

Anna Sandmann is not particularly known for being interested in boys. But the schoolgirl enjoys fencing and meets up with her best friend Mary from time to time. One day, her brother Raoul catches a frog at the hot-air balloon launch site and brings it home. While talking on the phone with Mary, Anna casually learns that her little brother has named the new pet Louis XVI. Suddenly, she puts two and two together: Louis XVI was the king who was beheaded, and her brother has just had a cut treated after slicing himself on a razor blade. She jumps up at once and just manages to stop Raoul from executing the frog with a homemade guillotine. She takes the frog and runs off with it to her room. At a bit of a loss as to what to do with the cute frog, she jokes with it that he is a frog prince and that she intends to kiss him. But the frog gets there just before her and kisses her. Strange green bubbles appear in the room, and the frog turns into a young man. He introduces himself as Prince Dietbert of Tümpelberg. Nearly 1,000 years earlier, on his eighteenth birthday, he had been turned into a frog by the court magician Gorm, as was customary in those days. The first prince inherited lands and a title, the second became a soldier, the third became a priest, and the fourth was put under a spell. Conveniently, the prince can turn back and forth by being kissed, so she does not have to tell anyone about the prince—especially not her mother. Anna gives Dietbert a new outfit, since his court clothes are rather conspicuous. His hair also has to be cut. At a pet shop, Dietbert wants to buy fly larvae and discovers that the shop belongs to the magician Gorm. Gorm tells him in a friendly manner that the curse will end in two days. The prince would then have to remain a frog forever. Unfortunately, Gorm cannot lift the curse. However, there is another way to end it: Dietbert must fall in love with a maiden who returns his love. Dietbert already thinks he is saved. Anna just has to fall in love with him, which he thinks will be no problem. Dietbert then tries to win Anna over. When he goes fencing with her, he thinks he has spotted a rival in fencing world champion Torben Wegner. He challenges him to a fencing duel and ultimately wins. Anna, however, is not impressed and is furious. She wants nothing more to do with him. Dietbert learns from Gorm that there is a second possibility. If he is human when the spell expires, he will remain so as long as he is not kissed. By now, Dietbert no longer believes in love and wants to fulfill his other great wish. Shortly before the spell is due to expire, he decides to fly to America in a hot-air balloon. Even when he was a frog, he watched hot-air balloons in the sky longingly for days from a pond. Anna, who is still thinking about Dietbert, finds out about this and almost arrives too late. She just manages to climb into Dietbert’s balloon. But the balloon is now in danger of colliding with the nearby church tower. Dietbert urges Anna to kiss him, because if he turned back into a frog, the balloon would immediately rise and be out of danger. But because they kiss out of love, the curse no longer has any effect, and Dietbert remains human. The magician Gorm, who has been watching all this, saves them from crashing by magically moving the church tower out of the balloon’s path.