User Reviews

"Nich' mit Leo" (certainly better than the working title, but not too great either) is a German movie from 1995, so this one is already almost 25 years old and it was released only roughly five years after the reunification to show you how old it is already. Or how quickly time has passed. The director is Ralf Gregan and this is one of his later career efforts as he turns 85 this year. The script is by Jürgen von der Lippe, one of his rare writing efforts, and he of course also plays the title character. Or I should say three central characters in fact. Most people still know him here in Germany for hosting "Geld oder Liebe". He is not too well-known as an actor I guess, so this could very well be his most famous project we got here. By the way, he just turned 70 not too long ago. So there is a great deal of irony to Harald Schmidt (one of my idols) playing his father while being roughly 10 years younger. And there I mentioned one of the names of well-known German comedians already that you will find in here. Schmidt's sidekick Herbert Feuerstein is on board as well. The late Dirk Back has one sexually inspired scene near the end. Karsten Speck may still be known to some too. Maybe the most known female actor here is Isabell Varell, but her screen time is as limited as her popularity, so yeah that says it all. Those female actors with bigger roles are completely unknown today to be honest. But it's really all about von der Lippe. The addition of his third character Leo in the film's final third felt really pointless to me and the character added basically nothing. However, the approaches he gave the crook and the priest were really decent and sometimes it even felt he was too good for the roles and the comedy. Then again, this saysmore positive about his acting, but also some negative about his writing. The story is pretty typical for what we call Verwechslungskomödien here in Germany, the humor is similar to the one in Otto Waalkes and Thomas Gottschalk movies (Supernasen). There is a great deal of klamauk to be fair, hullabaloo is what English speakers say I believe. That's pretty much all i have to say about the film. It's not very deep or insightful, but here and there you get a funny moment and some solid charm as well on a few occasions. i believe it is worth checking out and the really low rating is a bit unfair. Yes there is not a single component here or production value that really stands out or makes this a must-see, but it's 1.5 hours of pretty relaxing entertainment and you're not making a bad decision if you decide to check it out. No idea though if it's even shown or available outside Germany still in other langiages. I say go see it. Especially if you love Harald Schmidt as much as I do and luckily he is not limited to one scene in here only. Thumbs up. Also nice to see a film that is not scared of mocking the church a bit, which was probably not as common as it is today back in the 1990s.