Reviews

As a native speaker, I read the book several times, found it splendid, so I HAD to see that movie. Weired enough that film contains everything a great movie should have: great soundtrack, good camera, nice sets, wonderful surrealistic takes of the empty landscapes and the highway. I mean, road movie, what can go wrong? Anyway I realized that I was bored already after the first minutes. It's simply bad acting and bad timing. The main actors Göbel (Maik) and Batbileg (Tschick) seem to be selected only by appearance, their dialogues stuck and stumble, no timing at all, face expressions stay the same all the time, what could be funny stays dead, learned by heart directly from the text book and that's it.

Every scene is translated directly from the book, there are only minor changes (which not all of them I understand, so why is Maik sketching Tatjana, and not Beyoncé; why is the original joke with the maths test messed up etc.). Anyway, every scene ends up in a kind of faithfully following the book. You sit there and tick off unconsciously "well, now this episode is done, okay, now follows this one, good, next comes that...." - But you never submerge in that movie; the original feeling of ultimate freedom, fun and surrealistic humor is totally absent! I really don't understand why the movie gets good ratings everywhere. It's no bad substance, but it totally misses the goal.

Obviously the series is "you love it or you hate it". It's probably not suitable for those who expect a pure SciFi-adventure, as to seen from some comments. It is rather a crazy office soap that works by reduction to an extreme separated surrounding (the spaceship) within kind of a minimalistic office interior, making fun of the stereotypes of nowadays office cultures. Just think about the coffee-corner with the high-tech coffee machine where everyone meets themselves again and again... the bord psychologist with his hollow phrases (who of us hasn't already heard this kind of empty talk in some personal development workshop?)... the standard rituals of application procedures with all the unnecessary procedures around it; the incompetent leader, the narcissistic idiot, everyone and everything is there. And just by regularly mixing this with SciFi elements the story gets this wonderful weired absurdity that makes it such a laughing matter. I simply love it. Intelligent humor, never boring and always a new surprise in the plot, and of course a lot of things you recognize from the Dutch culture. I wonder how long it lasts, I hope for long time.

I didn't expect too much from a modern adaptation of the famous novel of Thomas Mann, but this movie is simply a bad joke. What a kitsch, what a flatness! The original novel is told slowly with a lot of humor, wit and delicacy; the movie instead tries to squeeze the whole plot into two hours, which results in an unbearable speed of pictures, scenes, half-told stories and fast & colorful scenes without sense, simply not nice to see any more. It takes twenty minutes until some recognizable scene shows up. Half of the story is invented, which is of course disappointing when you know the novel.

It could have been a good movie despite of all this, when you forget the novel and see it as a different story. But here, why on earth is the acting so poor? The actors talk, laugh, move and behave like an average 21th century German film-cast. No one talks the northern dialect and there is no sign of class differences in the language. They try, but they don't succeed. Just think of Gosford Park / Downtown Abbey, one of my favorites, where every detail just fits into the time picture.

Most ridiculous scene: main characters who play the violin but can't. Total no-go. Moving around with a bow, holding the instrument without moving the fingers, while great melodies are heard, come on, you can do this in some cheap production or in a TV commercial, but not in a movie that wants to be taken serious.

I tried to watch it anyway, just for enjoying some historic sites, but impossible. Stopped halfway. Boring, kitsch, annoying. Please excuse my poor English, I am still too upset... man... incredible.

When you ever wished you had participated in a happy leftie mass event - watch that movie. The camera gave me the whole time the feeling of being part of the crowd on the screen, just there in the school building, between all the funny people - the guy who plays flamenco guitar, some Manu Chao song, the pop-up band, people just dancing - all of them who want to make the world a better place. A lot of languages are used all over the movie, people act like like real people do, it's just fine. This is the first part. Everything afterward, as we know, is of extreme brutality, and I was happy that I had never been part in that leftie mass event. I really liked the movie how it was make, technically. It's only a pity that a lot of answers are not given. It would have been helpful to work out more of the backgrounds. The extreme force of the police, where did it come from? There must have been a lot of hate and fear a long time in advance. We don't get to know much about the really violent left wing and how far the police was able or willing to make a difference between them and the average wild-haired, guitar-playing and further peaceful demonstrators. So, I missed some different points of view besides just the picture of peaceful lefties. But when you realize that everything really has happened like this, the the world is maybe less subtle some times. And that makes me shiver.

Gosford Park is not at all about class revolution, nor about fast cinema. It's like a ironic documentary, a scientist's experimental setting, of people and classes who are placed together in a closed surrounding, meeting each other, moving upwards and downwards, leading their own lives, being dependent on each other and pretending not to care. I just love the movie. Can see it over and over again - when you know the plot, you can drop the subtitles and concentrate even more on the whole. I love the extremely well worked-out interiors. Everything in that movie is done with a crazy care for detail: up to the choice of cars (snobbish ladyship Trentham in a ways too old, once elegant model, the young folk in a sportive Bentley), the complexity of tasks, tools and handwork that the servants perform all the time, the subtle hints of the camera to what's going to take place... That movie shows a whole society in a nutshell. And when you know HOW it was done - with the advice of real servants on the set, original jewelery, right clothes and a lot of acting carefully like in the real old movies - you understand why it's so convincing. I love the complexity of the plot. So many lives and stories in that little universe: every person's important. And never seen a more convincing way of telling important facts to the viewer in a very natural way. I loved the personages, and am still moved to tears at the end. No way, ten stars.

I was even more shocked by the enthusiastic comments posted here than by the movie itself. Is THIS America, following a meaningless aversion and letting kids waste their time in a kind of sportive drilling as this spelling contest? If all of them had spent their time in a more intellectual way, they could have reached much more than with spelling like a computer. Especially the Indian father of (was it Neil) with his obsessive preparations seems disgusting to me, like someone who lives the mythes of "the American dream" as a caricature. I miss all along in this movie a critical point of view; it shows us struggle and hopes of all these children, but leaves us with many unanswered questions: what was it all about? Is everyone happy with the procedures of this contest? What about the story of the little ADHD-guy who is really lovable, but must be a nightmare to his mother and teachers? I asked myself all the time where the hard-working Asians where. No single one to spot on the podium. Maybe they understood and did real studies instead? I give three stars because nevertheless, this movie is a quite interesting peer into some parts of the American society. And it's not a boring movie. But it's quite flat and stays on the surface. The stupid repetitive soundtrack that creates (too) much artificial tension makes it worse, not better. Anyway, after seeing this movie, I felt instantly much more comfortable in the relaxed variety of European culture.