"Schokolade für den Chef", which means "Chocolate for the boss", is a German television movie from 2008, so these 1.5 hours are already over a decade old now. I think the title is not the wisest choice here because honestly the fact that the protagonist is the head of a big chocolate manufacturer feels very qucikly irrelevant. He could have been the boss from everything else really and it would not have matter, so it is a bit random they named the film like that and also included chocolate on the photo. Anyway, the director here is Manfred Stelzer, apparently retired now, but he made films since the 1970s already and his two writers here also worked for approximately 20 years at that point already. So much experience. Taking that into account, the outcome is fairly disappointing. There are names in here that German film buffs will immediately recognize. This includes mostly lead actor Götz George of course, but also in the supporting roles, you will find familiar faces like Fassbinder regular Irm Hermann, Ludger Pistor (who has played in Bond for example), Rudolf Wessely (who has been a respected actor for a long long time) and maybe even Pierre Besson. The filmmakers' experience as well as George leading the cast certainly attracted some attention, not just in terms of audiences, but also in terms of actors. Still the outcome is underwhelming. George delivers as always and this is certainly one of the weaker films he has appeared in. Still he always elevated the material and that is why I like him so much. Here he basically has to do it from the very beginning. It really makes no sense that nobody knows what he looks like if he is one of the ten richest Germans really. I mean I don't know either what the Aldi family looks like and I would not recognize them, but i could easily check if I wanted to and if I was a photographer trying to get a photograph of the man, then I definitely would know what he looks like. By the way, George plays a tough guy as always here. The scene with the dogs early on is already an example of that. They also made it easy to not think George's character is cruel by having the photographer act really mean before the dogs show up. And he still gets out quickly enough, so it turns out pretty harmless. In general, it is a harmless film and completely a comedy really.
The writing is too poor for a positive recommendation though. The idea of the chauffeur and the boss changing professions is alright and occasionally works. However, I must say that especially the story of the (former) driver is really flawed at times. This has less to do with the character or the actor, but more ith the fact that actress Astrid Meyerfeldt constantly shares the screen with him. She was terribly bad, by far the least talented cast member. Of course, her character was also not exactly written well, but this also applies to others, and how she effortlessly took the character down several more stairs on the quality scale was impressive. In the most negative fashion imaginable. Just take the scene when they are at the hotel and accidentally the television is switched on and yes we see her on some home shopping channel. Is this a joke? Biggest coincidence ever. They could not have picked a worse way to show us she is famous. And rich as a consequence. Luckily, when she was out of the picture, i.e. the action focused on George's character it was much better and he is the reason I give this two stars out of five and not two stars out of ten. Showing the young guns how to make a weak film and screenplay at least watchable. Of course he also gets a romance story throughout the film, mostly at the end and the actress is 30 years younger than him. But that is alright. With George, it is nothing new. Honestly it would have felt a bit strange had he hooked up with Hermann's character, even if they weren't related. It totally could have happened. I mean Hermann is still like five years younger or so. Anyway, all in all I still give this film a negative recommendation. It just isn't good enough in terms of the story and especially the references about eceonomy and the decisions linked to the business were not half as entertaining, interesting and meaningful as they wanted them to be. Also I must say I did not like at all how Ludger Pistor as wasted. He is a much better actor than he could show us here and I wish he could have had more scenes because the ones he did were really fine. Jule Böwe's nice looks as well as occasionally fine scene like of course when George's character tells the main antagonist about his real identity with the help of a picture are fine, but not frequent enough for me to say that you really wanna check this one. It's not a good film all in all and the weaker components are more dominant than the high-quality components. Watch something else instead. Still thanks to Mr. George for all the films and performances he left us over the cpourse of his very long career. May he rest in peace. Same I would like to say about Wessely, who was also a real scene stealer here. He's been acting (just like George) since the early 1950s already, so those to taken together had 110 years acting experience when this film was made back in 2008. Unreal. Shame it did not turn out any better, for the two had pretty good chemistry.
The writing is too poor for a positive recommendation though. The idea of the chauffeur and the boss changing professions is alright and occasionally works. However, I must say that especially the story of the (former) driver is really flawed at times. This has less to do with the character or the actor, but more ith the fact that actress Astrid Meyerfeldt constantly shares the screen with him. She was terribly bad, by far the least talented cast member. Of course, her character was also not exactly written well, but this also applies to others, and how she effortlessly took the character down several more stairs on the quality scale was impressive. In the most negative fashion imaginable. Just take the scene when they are at the hotel and accidentally the television is switched on and yes we see her on some home shopping channel. Is this a joke? Biggest coincidence ever. They could not have picked a worse way to show us she is famous. And rich as a consequence. Luckily, when she was out of the picture, i.e. the action focused on George's character it was much better and he is the reason I give this two stars out of five and not two stars out of ten. Showing the young guns how to make a weak film and screenplay at least watchable. Of course he also gets a romance story throughout the film, mostly at the end and the actress is 30 years younger than him. But that is alright. With George, it is nothing new. Honestly it would have felt a bit strange had he hooked up with Hermann's character, even if they weren't related. It totally could have happened. I mean Hermann is still like five years younger or so. Anyway, all in all I still give this film a negative recommendation. It just isn't good enough in terms of the story and especially the references about eceonomy and the decisions linked to the business were not half as entertaining, interesting and meaningful as they wanted them to be. Also I must say I did not like at all how Ludger Pistor as wasted. He is a much better actor than he could show us here and I wish he could have had more scenes because the ones he did were really fine. Jule Böwe's nice looks as well as occasionally fine scene like of course when George's character tells the main antagonist about his real identity with the help of a picture are fine, but not frequent enough for me to say that you really wanna check this one. It's not a good film all in all and the weaker components are more dominant than the high-quality components. Watch something else instead. Still thanks to Mr. George for all the films and performances he left us over the cpourse of his very long career. May he rest in peace. Same I would like to say about Wessely, who was also a real scene stealer here. He's been acting (just like George) since the early 1950s already, so those to taken together had 110 years acting experience when this film was made back in 2008. Unreal. Shame it did not turn out any better, for the two had pretty good chemistry.
