Reviews

Satire at its best. How can political murder, the cruel indoctrination of children and totalitarianism be funny? These filmmakers pull it off brilliantly. The series is suspenseful and fun from start to finish. The grand-guinol style works due to a clever plot and a story telling style oscillating between Kafka and Solzhenitsyn - thanks in no small measure to the captivating leading actress, Jella Haase. The East German regime was such an Orwellian nightmare that humor may be the only way to understand it. Normally over-the-top cartoon violence cannot stylistically co-exist with real life characters in real life jeopardy. In Kleo it somehow all hangs together.

Comedies are supposed to be funny. Not a laugh in this one. The scene with the friends trying to have sex is downright creepy. Why watch this? It's neither amusing, funny, sexy, warm hearted or revealing of anything humanly real other than someone trying oh so hard to be provocatively clever. Innately funny and talented actors wasted in scenes which are cringing in their phoniness. I'm forty, but can't remember a time in my young adulthood when I or my friends were so obsessed with making crude, juvenile wise cracks about sex every time we met for dinner or spoke on the phone. Is this supposed to be a pander to young audiences, as if young people are really that shallow and that easily entertained? I forced myself to watch this rank mediocrity to the end, curious to see just how bad it could get. It didn't disappoint me.