Resturlaub (2011)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

His boring girlfriend in Germany who wants children and a house or the spicy Spanish teacher from Argentina? You probably got the answer right already. This film is about Peter or Pitschi, who gets enough of his unspectacular life (and girl) and travels down to South America. He meets a woman (gold digger), starts an affair with her, but quickly realizes things are not all perfect there either. It already starts when he enters icy Buenos Aires in his summer clothes right after stepping out of the airplane. Meanwhile, his woman in Germany believes he is on a business trip.Sadly this film does not deliver with what it actually aimed to be: a comedy. The humor does not work very often and if it does, they use the same jokes again and again, so it becomes fairly repetitive. Manuela Wisbeck did a solid job as the German version of Melissa McCarthy. The film's director is Gregor Schnitzler, who worked with Schweiger, Schweighöfer, Tschirner, Löwitsch, Striesow and Uhl already in the past. The film was written by Tommy Jaud, who only did TV work before his effort here. Maximilian Brückner and Mira Bartuschek play the central characters here and if you know about German cinema a bit, you may have heard these names. They belong to Germany's more established actors for at least 10 years now. Antoine Monot Jr. has a decent supporting part and so does Martina Hill,who basically gives us a feature film version of her famous Heidi Klum parody. Well.. it's really just the voice and it's one of these repetitive factors I mentioned earlier.If you can look past the fart, oral sex humor and quotes about putting a chili sauce finger in certain orifices (what were they thinking?), this film may be particularly interesting to you if you come from the same area (Franconia) as the main character. Some dialect included here. This film balances the fine line between cringeworthy and funny, but most of the time it is actually the former. Another example would be the "Aber bitte mit Arne"-song. That's why I cannot really recommend it. At least, mostly thanks to Bartuschek's performance, the dramatic moments partially deliver, even if I wondered why it did not matter to her character at all that he cheated on her. I guess not even the best direction or performances (not that this film had any of the two) can save a very flawed script.

Spoiler Alert. There is no plot summary posted, so I will give a nutshell of a description, which may be a bit of a spoiler.I have to say that I enjoyed this film. I give it 6 stars because while it was a funny movie with a little bit of raunchiness (just wait till Argentina!), it just had some odd/unnecessary moments - for example, the goofy priest/soccer player.The story line is pretty much about a working man that is about to take the plunge, propose to a long-time girlfriend, but he gets cold feet or rather frozen feet, since he flees Germany for Argentina just to run away from his reality - the eventual asking of "The" question to his gal. Meanwhile he runs amok in Argentina...but he must act quickly, for his gal is about to have second thoughts about him!Oddly enough, I cannot find this film for sale on Amazon and it is not available on Netflix...I want to watch this movie again, but with my wife.

Sometimes one reason alone is enough to watch a movie. In this case the reason has a name: Melanie Winiger. Seriously though: While I loved the fact that the movie was trying to be different (as different as it could be, without returning too much to used clichés), it still wasn't as good and driven as I had hoped it would be.While the actress that I mentioned is very beautiful and talented, her character suffers from poor writing. I am sure there was more to explore there (then the paper thin 2-D version she becomes), but that is true of the other characters too. Still the actors give their best and this is pretty good considering. If you can forgive the flaws, you will be able to enjoy the movie :o)