"Vadder, Kutter, Sohn" is a German television film from 2017, so neither really new nor dated and the director here of these 90 minutes is Lars Jessen, a pretty prolific director from Germany, with certainly many more films in his body of work than his writer Volker Krappen. Both originalte from North Germany, which makes sense given the film's background and setting. Axel Prahl, the lead actor here, does as well and I was certainly feeling him. He was a really good casting choice. Yes he has a tendency to always play the same characters in his movies, but thanks to accents and his magnificent charisma I was not feeling it too much this time. Besides, I quite like him most of the time. I mean how could I not as he really makes the frequently unbearable Liefers watchable in Tatort films. But let us not get too much into detail now about Tatort Münster, instead focus on these 1.5 hours here. Prahl's co-lead is plkayed by Jonas Nay, another actor from North Germany and he is mostly known through the "Deutschland xy" series, pretty young still and I like him in some stuff I have seen him in. Here not so much though. I felt he had a few weak moments and just wasn't on par with Prahl overall, which definitely had a negative impact on the film overall. But let's take a look at the general facts first. This is a father-son story at its core, a mix of drama and comedy overall and here and there was a moment that put a smile on my lips like the scene when Prahl's character thought his son was gay, but what the young fella was really trying to tell him was that he had to close his business and his dad had no idea. This was perhaps the best moment of the film.
Every time it gets more serious, it isn't that good in my opinion and Prahl just could not carry the film on his own on his shoulders against an inferior co-lead and underwhelming subplots like the one that involves the all the music references. And I love music, but not in this film. Like the one young woman whose singing was really off was the perfect example of a scene that just wasn't funny. It was not Judith Rosmair, but a character who just appeared in one single scene. As for Rosmair, she was okay overall, certainly very attractive given her age still, but she just did not have anything to work with. Peter Franke was better, almost a bit of a scene stealer, but he also did not really have the material to shine. The only ones who did were the two main characters. And just one of them did. However, I liked that there was no main antagonist or so, this film did not need him. Unfortunately, it needed better attention to detail with what it was actually trying to achieve. This includes basically all supporting characters, like the implied future romance between the young guy and the police officer felt very much for the sake of it. Or like I said this music contest. Or the gambling references weren't much better either. And I personally do not like Green Day, so the frequency of their songs in this film did not help either in my very case. It is basically Prahl who keeps the film from becoming a big mess and from totally falling apart and he is the key (maybe the only) reason why I give it at least 2 stars out of 5 and not just 1. It's a pity though that with him at their disposal, and he is quite a star in Germany right now and everybody recognizes him, they weren't able to hire a better screen writers. Apart from that, I guess if at all this is a film that is probably more interesting to audiences from North Germany, such as Hamburg and they will probably like it more than Bavarians. Nonetheless, my overall suggestion here is that you skip the film unless you are really a hopeless Prahl fanboy. This is probably the only scenario maybe in which you will manage to ignore everything that is wrong with this film. Just liking him the way I do is not enough. I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
Every time it gets more serious, it isn't that good in my opinion and Prahl just could not carry the film on his own on his shoulders against an inferior co-lead and underwhelming subplots like the one that involves the all the music references. And I love music, but not in this film. Like the one young woman whose singing was really off was the perfect example of a scene that just wasn't funny. It was not Judith Rosmair, but a character who just appeared in one single scene. As for Rosmair, she was okay overall, certainly very attractive given her age still, but she just did not have anything to work with. Peter Franke was better, almost a bit of a scene stealer, but he also did not really have the material to shine. The only ones who did were the two main characters. And just one of them did. However, I liked that there was no main antagonist or so, this film did not need him. Unfortunately, it needed better attention to detail with what it was actually trying to achieve. This includes basically all supporting characters, like the implied future romance between the young guy and the police officer felt very much for the sake of it. Or like I said this music contest. Or the gambling references weren't much better either. And I personally do not like Green Day, so the frequency of their songs in this film did not help either in my very case. It is basically Prahl who keeps the film from becoming a big mess and from totally falling apart and he is the key (maybe the only) reason why I give it at least 2 stars out of 5 and not just 1. It's a pity though that with him at their disposal, and he is quite a star in Germany right now and everybody recognizes him, they weren't able to hire a better screen writers. Apart from that, I guess if at all this is a film that is probably more interesting to audiences from North Germany, such as Hamburg and they will probably like it more than Bavarians. Nonetheless, my overall suggestion here is that you skip the film unless you are really a hopeless Prahl fanboy. This is probably the only scenario maybe in which you will manage to ignore everything that is wrong with this film. Just liking him the way I do is not enough. I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
