"Ziemlich russische Freunde" is a German German-language television film from 2020, so pretty new and recent in fact, especially because it is from late November 2020. This is an ARD production, which of course means that this does not only run for minimally under 1.5 hours as they usually do, but also that Degeto was on board, which is always a safe indicator that you are about to watch a pretty bad film. And making such a statement about this one here, would still be a gentle way to describe it. It may sound harsh, but it is very true in my opinion. Let's stay with the basics though. The director is Esther Gronenborn, a pretty prolific filmmaker who launched her career approximately 20 years ago, so it is definitely a bit shocking to see somebody after such a fairly long time in the industry come up with something like that. Occasionally, she also came up with her own screenplays for the projects she directed, but not so this time. Instead, they got Michael Vershinin and his name is kinda fitting for thhe subject you could say. However, if you take a look at this man's body of work, you may not be amused either. I mean he only started writing screenplays in 2016 apparently, so not even for five years when he worked on this one and still his body of work is gigantic, more than what most people come up with in five years, more than what many people come up with in ten years. Pretty sick. But not good. On the contrary, his body of work is really the epitome of quantity over quality. Really disappointing. Mass production basically that sacrifices any kind of creativity apparently if we are judging from this one here. I still hope (and think) that the majority of his other stuff cannot be as poor as the outcome here. The writing was really the key why it all became such a mess.
As for the cast, let me mention Wolfgang Stumph first. Not only because he is an actor from the East and thus fits in especially nicely into a movie with focus on people from Russia, even if he belongs to the other side of course. But this film was on television today because the man is about to have its 75th birthday and the MDR celebrates this occasion by showing many of his movies. In this one here, however, he only plays the grandpa and does not have that much screen time really. But it is alright. I mean I mentioned his age already, no need to work that much anymore. Still, I am kinda impressed how he looks way younger than he actually is. Good for him. The cast list here on imdb is pretty chaotic, so someone needs to get in some order honestly and it is difficult to elaborate on the protagonists here. I guess these would be, from the German family, Michael Mommsen and Susanna Simon. They are both pretty experienced and established actors, maybe no perfomrers where you immediately recognize the face and remember the name when you come across them in a movie, but certainly with many appearances over the years. So it makes sense they are the closest to lead performers this film has. Or actually not. Or only in Mommsen's case because I think he has much more screen time than his movie wife. The story also takes a turn and focus on the younger characters eventually, so Anton von Lucke is featured a lot in here as well and same applies to Barbara Prakopenka. Cannot say anything positive about them though. The latter was tolerable, but written in a fairly uninspired fashion and also too stereotypical for my taste. von Lucke was downright bad and almost unwatchable at times and managed the impossible to make the already poorly written character seem even worse. Highly disappointing and one key reason why I despised this film.
I shall mention a few specific moments and scenes when it felt especially bad. It is basically the case right from the beginning, but I will do some brainstorming now: First of all, the (ab)use of animals here felt very wrong this time. Sorry, but vodka in aquarium and dead frogs/fish are nothing funny at all, even if they are removed and replaced, so the small child is happy. Same about the inclusion of chickens here. I mean how tiny was the cage for that little hen. Disgraceful really. She could barely walk in there, let alone fly. Why was this included anyway? To include some Soviet farm feeling? Atrocious. As for Stumph's character, I was appaled by everything written for his character and he should have refused the role. The winning streak and eventual loss at the casino felt so ridiculous. His statement about the grown-ups messing up felt pseudo important and for the sake of it all. And that he of course makes a connection with the elderly Soviet lady from the family was the negative icing on the cake. There is a lot more really. I wish he would not have accepted the role. There really was no need to financially I'm sure for him. And definitely not artistically. As for the love between the two young ones, this is also where the film goes all kinds of wrong. The noise when the young man comes visit the young woman when she is with her orchestra was truly embarrassing. Not cute in a clumsy way. Not sweet. Just embarrassing. Not what he did was embarrassing, but how they wrote him. All the following scenes between the two and especially the dialogues there are so poor they are almost unwatchable. Same applies to the phone call they are getting at the same time. Or the story with the handsome lawyer dude who of course creates some jealous in the man. There is much more to this story, the movie really got it all kinds of wrong there.
Oh and a key inclusion here is that the two fathers start a business relationship that goes awry when they find an old war bomb on the premises that one sold to the other. As they go and try to get it away (very wise decision of course), they are of course randomly caught by the police and it all becomes public. Well, at least this is realistic that it becomes public, if nothing else is. Not the fact that it is there. Not that they found it. Not how they try to deal with the situation. The consequence is a gigantic amount of money and this money gets in the way there with the two families having a stable and friendly relationship with each other, especially when the German mother is very strict on the entire matter. But as always with ARD Degeto, there is a solution that makes everybody happy again, even if it is completely unrealistic and unauthentic. Like how the old Soviet lady wins in the casion as she goes secretly on her own again and turns one chip into hundreds apparently with her secret talent for roulette. So the financial aspect is solved easily and no longer a problem. The two lovebird kids are getting together again as well and the connection between the woman and the lawyer is strictly friendship. The phone call with the bathtub was nonsense as well by the way. So unwatchable. And how the young guy takes off then to confront the woman he likes wasn't any better with this reference to the very start when one character tried to break a specific record, but the result is he flies through the air instead and there is an accident there that results into a light heart attack or something. Which is one inclusion that could be a good enough basis for an entire movie with quality writing, but what they did here is they only included it for the sake of it and seconds later it was forgotten. Oh and by the way, the references early on by one character on the phone about liver transplants and Chernobyl are neither funny not inspired nor anything else on a positive scale. Just embarrassing.
Finally, a common problem with Degeto is sexism. Anti-male sexism. The female characters are almost always tough and dedicated and the males, in the best-case scenario have good intentions, but still mess everything up. How does it happen here? Well, the two fathers end up doing this gigantic mess with the bomb. And are they serious that the cops don't see it when the Russian non-verbally communicated with the German guy. This is really an outrage. The young man is needy and constatly after the young Russian woman and this is linked to a statement that men always have to gfight for their queens and the women have to invest nothing in upcoming relationships. They can even flirt a bit with other guys. All okay. I have no words for this at all. And the older man (Stumph's character), well he thinks he is the king of gambling, even if he loses at home when playing against these two elderly ladies. And even after having all this money and a winning streak at the casino, he loses it all again only minutes later and you can see from the elderly Russian woman's face already that she knew what was coming. She is pretty skeptical and wants to stop and not keep risking it all. And she is also the one who, as I stated earlier, has to get things right again. I really hope no people with a gambling problem watch this film because of the message it sends. This is pretty much it then. There are several other weak inclusions here, some of them extremely poor, but you get the message. This is a film that must absolutely be skipped. The good news is that Degeto is not as prolific anymore as during its "prime", but when they release something, also now in 2020 and 2021, you can be sure that the outcome is a travesty with no connection to reality and the only intention to entertain the simple masses. And how is all this financed? Yep, through GEZ money of course. Major thumbs-down for this mess of a movie. Highly not recommended.
As for the cast, let me mention Wolfgang Stumph first. Not only because he is an actor from the East and thus fits in especially nicely into a movie with focus on people from Russia, even if he belongs to the other side of course. But this film was on television today because the man is about to have its 75th birthday and the MDR celebrates this occasion by showing many of his movies. In this one here, however, he only plays the grandpa and does not have that much screen time really. But it is alright. I mean I mentioned his age already, no need to work that much anymore. Still, I am kinda impressed how he looks way younger than he actually is. Good for him. The cast list here on imdb is pretty chaotic, so someone needs to get in some order honestly and it is difficult to elaborate on the protagonists here. I guess these would be, from the German family, Michael Mommsen and Susanna Simon. They are both pretty experienced and established actors, maybe no perfomrers where you immediately recognize the face and remember the name when you come across them in a movie, but certainly with many appearances over the years. So it makes sense they are the closest to lead performers this film has. Or actually not. Or only in Mommsen's case because I think he has much more screen time than his movie wife. The story also takes a turn and focus on the younger characters eventually, so Anton von Lucke is featured a lot in here as well and same applies to Barbara Prakopenka. Cannot say anything positive about them though. The latter was tolerable, but written in a fairly uninspired fashion and also too stereotypical for my taste. von Lucke was downright bad and almost unwatchable at times and managed the impossible to make the already poorly written character seem even worse. Highly disappointing and one key reason why I despised this film.
I shall mention a few specific moments and scenes when it felt especially bad. It is basically the case right from the beginning, but I will do some brainstorming now: First of all, the (ab)use of animals here felt very wrong this time. Sorry, but vodka in aquarium and dead frogs/fish are nothing funny at all, even if they are removed and replaced, so the small child is happy. Same about the inclusion of chickens here. I mean how tiny was the cage for that little hen. Disgraceful really. She could barely walk in there, let alone fly. Why was this included anyway? To include some Soviet farm feeling? Atrocious. As for Stumph's character, I was appaled by everything written for his character and he should have refused the role. The winning streak and eventual loss at the casino felt so ridiculous. His statement about the grown-ups messing up felt pseudo important and for the sake of it all. And that he of course makes a connection with the elderly Soviet lady from the family was the negative icing on the cake. There is a lot more really. I wish he would not have accepted the role. There really was no need to financially I'm sure for him. And definitely not artistically. As for the love between the two young ones, this is also where the film goes all kinds of wrong. The noise when the young man comes visit the young woman when she is with her orchestra was truly embarrassing. Not cute in a clumsy way. Not sweet. Just embarrassing. Not what he did was embarrassing, but how they wrote him. All the following scenes between the two and especially the dialogues there are so poor they are almost unwatchable. Same applies to the phone call they are getting at the same time. Or the story with the handsome lawyer dude who of course creates some jealous in the man. There is much more to this story, the movie really got it all kinds of wrong there.
Oh and a key inclusion here is that the two fathers start a business relationship that goes awry when they find an old war bomb on the premises that one sold to the other. As they go and try to get it away (very wise decision of course), they are of course randomly caught by the police and it all becomes public. Well, at least this is realistic that it becomes public, if nothing else is. Not the fact that it is there. Not that they found it. Not how they try to deal with the situation. The consequence is a gigantic amount of money and this money gets in the way there with the two families having a stable and friendly relationship with each other, especially when the German mother is very strict on the entire matter. But as always with ARD Degeto, there is a solution that makes everybody happy again, even if it is completely unrealistic and unauthentic. Like how the old Soviet lady wins in the casion as she goes secretly on her own again and turns one chip into hundreds apparently with her secret talent for roulette. So the financial aspect is solved easily and no longer a problem. The two lovebird kids are getting together again as well and the connection between the woman and the lawyer is strictly friendship. The phone call with the bathtub was nonsense as well by the way. So unwatchable. And how the young guy takes off then to confront the woman he likes wasn't any better with this reference to the very start when one character tried to break a specific record, but the result is he flies through the air instead and there is an accident there that results into a light heart attack or something. Which is one inclusion that could be a good enough basis for an entire movie with quality writing, but what they did here is they only included it for the sake of it and seconds later it was forgotten. Oh and by the way, the references early on by one character on the phone about liver transplants and Chernobyl are neither funny not inspired nor anything else on a positive scale. Just embarrassing.
Finally, a common problem with Degeto is sexism. Anti-male sexism. The female characters are almost always tough and dedicated and the males, in the best-case scenario have good intentions, but still mess everything up. How does it happen here? Well, the two fathers end up doing this gigantic mess with the bomb. And are they serious that the cops don't see it when the Russian non-verbally communicated with the German guy. This is really an outrage. The young man is needy and constatly after the young Russian woman and this is linked to a statement that men always have to gfight for their queens and the women have to invest nothing in upcoming relationships. They can even flirt a bit with other guys. All okay. I have no words for this at all. And the older man (Stumph's character), well he thinks he is the king of gambling, even if he loses at home when playing against these two elderly ladies. And even after having all this money and a winning streak at the casino, he loses it all again only minutes later and you can see from the elderly Russian woman's face already that she knew what was coming. She is pretty skeptical and wants to stop and not keep risking it all. And she is also the one who, as I stated earlier, has to get things right again. I really hope no people with a gambling problem watch this film because of the message it sends. This is pretty much it then. There are several other weak inclusions here, some of them extremely poor, but you get the message. This is a film that must absolutely be skipped. The good news is that Degeto is not as prolific anymore as during its "prime", but when they release something, also now in 2020 and 2021, you can be sure that the outcome is a travesty with no connection to reality and the only intention to entertain the simple masses. And how is all this financed? Yep, through GEZ money of course. Major thumbs-down for this mess of a movie. Highly not recommended.
