User Reviews

"Schlaraffenland" or "$chlaraffenland" or "Paradise Mall" is a German 105-minute movie from 1999, so this one will have its 20th anniversary next year. And I can still only say that for a few more days until it is 2019. The writer and director here is experienced German filmmaker Friedemann Fromm and he got help with the script from his brother Christoph. Given the fact that both were far from huge stars at that point back in the old millennium still, I am baffled by the all-star cast we have here: Duken, Lauterbach, Brühl, Schilling, Schenke, Bormann. Oh well, many of them weren't that big back then, but yeah it speaks for good casting because this was from way before Schilling's breakthrough and also the first theatrical release for a Daniel Brühl movie and his part was far from minor. The film is pretty similar to many German films from the late 1990s, early 2000s, if you think of Run Lola Run for example. Crime story lines involving young people were a huge thing back then here in Germany. Certainly bigger than today. Here we have a group of youngster who just want to throw a big party collide with a group of criminal security guards who play to frame the kids into major theft while getting away with the harvest themselves. In theory, this was a good idea, but the film sadly totally loses itself in the story trying to become as fast, hip and spectacular as possible while criminally neglecting the character study element about why people do what they do. They just do it. Really a shame because this could have been so much better with the actors they had available. Even the location that could have delivered a bit of a claustrophobic feel stayed fairly underwhelming, namely a huge shopping mall. Another thing that bothers we was the tendency with these (then) new wild German movies to turn things too much into black-and-white because honestly the young folks here are presented like really good people despite them doing what they are doing. This should not justify the actions by Lauterbach's gang whatsoever or anything, but more shades would have been nice. And when they went for them like with Potente's character, it felt fairly clumsy to be honest. There were more than just a few moments when the film tried to rely too much on the action perspective as if it was pointless fun and yeah, but then on other occasions, it felt like the complete contrary that the movie was taking itself about 10 times as serious as it had any right to do so. Perhaps the Fromms still lacked the experience to make it work I don't know. But the outcome is pretty flawed and there is a reason why a movie with so many really famous German actors today was only seen by so few. It is because it isn't any good. Watch something else instead. I give it a thumbs-down overall and without hesitation.