[2] Set in Germany during the Weimar Republic, the film begins in the small provincial town of Neustadt, the home to schoolboy Emil Tischbein.

When Grundeis tries to exchange the notes, Emil accuses him of theft, proving that the money is his by mentioning the holes left in the bills by the pin he used to secure them to his lining.

Mordaunt Hall wrote in his New York Times review in 1931: "It is a pity that the audience that welcomed Emil und die Detektive, a German-language children's film, to the Ufa-Cosmopolitan yesterday afternoon did not have the chance to meet the youthful actors in the flesh, as happened when this delightful picture had its première at the Kurfürstendamm Theatre in Berlin several weeks ago.

Those who may imagine that American boys have exclusive rights on Indians," "Cops and Robbers," et al., will discover that such isn't the case and will settle down to enjoy the interesting and rapid development of a tale beginning with Emil (Rolf Wenkhaus) and two companions throwing dice to see who shall "remodel" a statue in Neustadt in defiance of the police and winding up with his return from Berlin in an airplane, hailed as the hero who has effected the arrest of a notorious bank robber.

"[3] British film critic Philip French from the Guardian wrote in 2013: "It's a lively, funny, exciting tale of a country mouse collaborating with streetwise city kids, and it creates a splendid picture of bustling life in the capital of Weimar Germany.

One can now see its influence on two major British movies: The Lady Vanishes (1938) copies the hallucinatory sequence on a train that follows the villain giving Emil a drugged sweet, and Hue and Cry (1947) borrows the notion of smart, organised schoolkids chasing a criminal in the big city.