Movie Thoughts: Grand Prix of Europe (2025)

• Released: July 14th, 2025
• Directed by: Waldemar Fast
• Running time: 1h 38min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

A mouse named Edda dreams of becoming a great racer like her hero, the driver Ed. When one day an opportunity presents itself, Edda is given the chance to take Ed's place in the Grand Prix of Europe. But the race is being sabotaged by a mysterious figure...

My Thoughts

For the record, the only reason I watched this is because it features the Europa Park (German theme park I've been to quite often) mascots as main characters. The rest didn't look appealing to me, as stuff like racing and F1 driving is just really boring to me (not to mention bad for the environment).

And this movie...it didn't do much to win me over. Okay, it's not terrible or anything, it has a few redeemable qualities, such as pretty nice visuals and an engaging enough story and mystery for the target audience. But the rest, yeah...older viewers will not be getting much out of this one. Heck, even for Europa Park fans there is very little here. Outside of their mascots being the main characters and it taking place in Europe, there's very little references to other Europa Park stuff such as the rides, which is what I was hoping for. This is honestly more a movie for (young) F1 fans than Europa Park fans, at least if you ask me.

I also found Edda to be a horribly unlikable character. Sure, it sucks that her father's theme park is losing money and might have to close, but that doesn't mean she gets free reign to do whatever she wants. The main plot of the movie (Edda taking Ed's place as a driver and hoping to raise money for the theme park this way) only happens because she acted like an irresponsible jerk. The movie keeps going on and on about how Ed is selfish and stuff, but honestly Edda can be just as bad. The movie's inciting incident is literally that she injures Ed to the point he can't race and steals his car. And the movie in the end rewards her for this behavior. And since this is a movie for young children, I don't think this is a good moral to send. Edda also has quite a few racism-ish moments towards the raven character when she suspects him of being the bad guy in the race with no evidence other than she gets bad vibes from him. Not a good look for your main character, especially when it gets her rewarded for this behavior in the end. 

The characters outside of Edda are honestly just okay. Ed is fine, he goes through an obvious arc of learning to accept friendship and not being so selfish. Böckli, Nachtkraab and Cindy were all pretty solid and I surprisingly didn't hate the twist villain, he was built up pretty decently all things considered. 

The animation of the movie is overall pretty nice and it does have a nice visual look, like I said before, but the animation at times could also be just a tad too "floaty" or lacking in "oomph" in the movements. Not terrible but it didn't look great at times.

Overall this is just a very safe and by-the-books movie, not bad and I'm sure a young audience will enjoy this, but for fans of Europa Park or older watchers in general there really is not much here. And I do think it's genuinely a really bad message to send that Edda gets rewarded for her selfish behavior, especially when Ed is being punished for doing the exact same.