"Was heißt hier Oma!" is a Germa television film from 2005, so this one has its 15th anniversary this year and like most of the others it tuns for 1.5 hours. The director is Ariane Zeller, who launches her career through "Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten" (Germany's most known daily soap opera) and has since directed many small screen releases that are rarely mediocre, usually weaker than that. Same is true for the screenplays by writer Andy T. Hoetzel, so it is maybe good news he has not been very active in the last decade. His co-writer Ina Siefert may have made the right decision and switched her career focus to composing soundtracks, although I cannot really comment on if these are better than her screenplays. Anyway, let us focus on this film here. The translation of the title would be "What do you mean grandmother!" and this is basically meant in a way, in which the central character sees herself as active and desirable enough that she does not really want to be called an old lady. She is played by Gaby Dohm who was in her early 60s at that point and starred in quite a few small screen releases back then I think, also playing lead characters frequently just like she does in here. Not justified though in my opinion. I think she looks okay for her age and has decent recognition value, but that is all the positive I can say. Acting is definitely not her strength and as she is in almost every scene it hurts the film a lot. She is overacting since minute one when we see her walk in the most confident manner to her job where she kindly greets the doorman, but not so kindly greets a colleague. She works at a fashion department store where she is in charge of ordering the garments. So of course, she is dressed accordingly from beginning to end, alays very chic. Clearly this is also used in order to hide the weaknesses when it comes to her performance. It is tough to watch at times and pretty cringeworthy how she has zero talent when it comes to subtlety or in making more emotional scenes work and there are (as always) quite a few in this film, but yeah unless you are really easily entertained, you will not be moved by this film whatsoever.
As for the supporting cast here, we have Tina Ruland playing the central character's daughter, but she is basically pregnant all movie long and lies in a bed at the hospital, which is fine because she is another actress who may be relatively attractive, but real range is nothing she has sadly. The father to the child is played by Florian Fitz. Nothing really to say about him. His character is very busy and gone as quickly as he appears early on. He does not have the time to take care of the other two children because of his job, so this is where Dohm's character comes into play. But of course, playing proxy mother has its price and it hurts the elderly lady's career to the point where she loses her prestigious job and gets demoted in her company. As for the two child actors, they were more prolific than I expected, but most recently they have not starred in films anymore, so not sure if they gave up on acting. I cannot really judge their talent here. I have seen worse from actors this age I guess and the boy looked like the very young Lewis Capaldi. Back to the film, even if I really do not want to say a lot more. It feels too much already. I will just list a few specific scenes that made me think this was really a failure and script/screenplay is key here that destroyed it all and I expect if there's two writers, then they really should be able to find each other's mistakes, but then again ambition was maybe completely not existent here to fit the crowd and budget. One scene would be when the old lady speaks to the kids and does not even know there is no school on Saturday, let alone that it is Saturday. No words on that. I don't think they want us to think she is senile. This was just a minor moment I know, but it shows that attention to detail is really not present here. Another scene would be the pseudo drama near the end when Rüdiger Vogler's character is in danger of dying and the boy (Capaldi) comes to the rescue out of nowhere. Ridiculous really, also the words Vogler's character says afterwards when he is taken into the car that what hurts more than the physical pain is what she said to him that they don't fit together. Cringeworthy and it is a bit sad to see an actually talented actor like Vogler, who was im Wenders' lead actor for quite a while, appear in films like this after doing high-quality stuff like "Alice in the Cities". Oh well I guess he has to make ends meet too. And a third scene would be the job offer also at the end. There we see Dohm's character not giving it herbest at all in her new position and of course she gets asked by another woman if she wants to work for her in a position in which she will be respected again. Typical case of seeking unrealistic happy ending closure as we see it so often in German television films. Same category would be her making up with her daughter. Slightly more realistic, but the way they included it it still felt really random and for the sake of it. So yes, this film is a mess. Big thumbs-down and it is not even good enough to be shown at noon as it was here today. Highly not recommended. Watch something else instead.
As for the supporting cast here, we have Tina Ruland playing the central character's daughter, but she is basically pregnant all movie long and lies in a bed at the hospital, which is fine because she is another actress who may be relatively attractive, but real range is nothing she has sadly. The father to the child is played by Florian Fitz. Nothing really to say about him. His character is very busy and gone as quickly as he appears early on. He does not have the time to take care of the other two children because of his job, so this is where Dohm's character comes into play. But of course, playing proxy mother has its price and it hurts the elderly lady's career to the point where she loses her prestigious job and gets demoted in her company. As for the two child actors, they were more prolific than I expected, but most recently they have not starred in films anymore, so not sure if they gave up on acting. I cannot really judge their talent here. I have seen worse from actors this age I guess and the boy looked like the very young Lewis Capaldi. Back to the film, even if I really do not want to say a lot more. It feels too much already. I will just list a few specific scenes that made me think this was really a failure and script/screenplay is key here that destroyed it all and I expect if there's two writers, then they really should be able to find each other's mistakes, but then again ambition was maybe completely not existent here to fit the crowd and budget. One scene would be when the old lady speaks to the kids and does not even know there is no school on Saturday, let alone that it is Saturday. No words on that. I don't think they want us to think she is senile. This was just a minor moment I know, but it shows that attention to detail is really not present here. Another scene would be the pseudo drama near the end when Rüdiger Vogler's character is in danger of dying and the boy (Capaldi) comes to the rescue out of nowhere. Ridiculous really, also the words Vogler's character says afterwards when he is taken into the car that what hurts more than the physical pain is what she said to him that they don't fit together. Cringeworthy and it is a bit sad to see an actually talented actor like Vogler, who was im Wenders' lead actor for quite a while, appear in films like this after doing high-quality stuff like "Alice in the Cities". Oh well I guess he has to make ends meet too. And a third scene would be the job offer also at the end. There we see Dohm's character not giving it herbest at all in her new position and of course she gets asked by another woman if she wants to work for her in a position in which she will be respected again. Typical case of seeking unrealistic happy ending closure as we see it so often in German television films. Same category would be her making up with her daughter. Slightly more realistic, but the way they included it it still felt really random and for the sake of it. So yes, this film is a mess. Big thumbs-down and it is not even good enough to be shown at noon as it was here today. Highly not recommended. Watch something else instead.
