The Raspberry Reich (2004)

Best movie of this year hands down!

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

"Raspberry Reich" was very much advertised G e r m a n m o v i e prior to and upon a world-reputable international film festival, and packed viewing venues in full with folks from various walks of life. I do not know whether co-viewers were already prepared to a degree of a male nudity and simply screening a sexual revolution in making to a couple of hundreds cinema-goers in the heart of a multi-million-dweller town, but I was personally much confused with outbursts of laughing and females' comments following any squeeze of a l i t t l e b r o t h e r on a screen, not speaking more. This work is a perfect parody on communist (leftist as more usable in modern time writings) propaganda where explicit stupidity of leaders cheating own followers while clinching to a political power and financial gains has grotesquely been disclosed with sex and orgies at any preference available a low budget movie allowed. Of course, same gender sex is the most powerful tool to allegorize a "revolutionary struggle", where lust for empowering and power over the human being are very similar psychological constituents of actually different activities. People left cinema smiling and in a good mood, which is the best outcome masterpieces present.

What a disappointment! I was expecting something wild, something wicked... and all i got is a 90 minutes flick that seems to last an eternity! The plot is so thin and foreseeable that it should have last at most 15 minutes not an hour and a half, come on! The actors are so bad (except the actress who played the hysterical Godrun, the only one who seems to have understand the level of acting required to make this comedy works and be at least a little bit funny); the actors from "Plan 9 from outer space" seem to deserve an Oscar in comparison...well, maybe thats what the director wanted to make them look funny, so the movie could be considered as a comedy. The only good comic scene is at the beginning when Godrun and her boyfriend f*** in the elevator...but again, we got the point, it was funny for the first seconds, but after 5 minutes, it just ruins the idea and gets just plain boring.As a political satire, well, doesn't work either. The ideas are exposed in such a superficial way, nothing is developed, just a bunch of revolutionary ideas or historical facts thrown in our face, and then repeated on screen, always with the same boring manners: Godrun shouts them with the same voice tone from the beginning to the end, then we see the text in red letters, pink letters, whatever color on screen. Great editing, but the processes get so overused through the whole movie...ZZZzzzz! As entertaining and developed as an oral expose in class in high school. And the link between homosexuality and revolution is so thin, the director seems to think that writing slogans on screen while the actors s*** and f*** is enough to explain the idea...it unfortunately never goes further. We could have had a nice reflexion about it, we get nothing except porn, which is far from being bad in itself, but even as a porn flick its deceiving.The scenes are so ordinary, so short, just regular porn, far from being as hardcore as it wants us to think it is. Maybe LaBruce thought that as a gay man, i would be turned on by the idea of seeing straight characters make it together, but the actors are so weak, their characters have then no credibility at all, how can i believe for just one second that they are supposedly straight??? My gay radar would make me guess miles away that these guys are gay. LOL In conclusion, great editing, some great music too, but ends up being a badly played wannabe-pseudo-political-porn-comedy. Nothing more than 2 out of 10.

I don't believe I've ever seen such a montage of music, pornography, political satire, and humor presented in such fashion as in this bold and astonishing piece of film-making.I know the average moviegoer would turn away from this movie because of its pounding and raw sexuality, especially homosexual scenes that rival the best of this "art form." But if you have a yearning for experimental film-making, for stunning and shocking action, for a satiric look at terrorism --then you will be rewarded by this astounding work.Get ready to be annoyed, agitated, repulsed --that's one of the goals of this movie. But I think the film ought to be on the syllabus of every film school because of its utter creativity and audacity. Bravo!

I saw this at a film festival in Philly where it was aptly introduced as "...either political commentary disguised as hard core gay porn, or gay porn disguised as political commentary." As porn...wow. I wasn't quite expecting the explicitness--so if that's what you're looking for, then enjoy. (I must confess that I did.) The actors are all very photogenic and appealing. There definitely was comedy, and perhaps even food for thought, in the political statements made by the over-the-top revolutionary characters. I found it a bit difficult to switch gears, but maybe after repeated watchings I'll be able to do so. Those who are able to view hard core fare from an artistic and/or intellectual point of view will probably be better able to appreciate the film's artsy elements as well.