User Reviews

"Schmidts Katze" or "Schmidt's Cat" or "Schmidt's Nine Lives" is a German 90-minute movie from last year (2015). The director is Marc Schlegel and he is also one of no less than four writers that came up with the screenplay. This is a bit disappointing as I certainly expect better quality with so many guys working on the script, but I guess it is a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. Anyway, I already describe in the title of my review how I perceived this 1.5-hour film. There is not a single aspect that is really bad, but there is also not a single aspect that is really convincing or makes me enthusiastic in any way to tell you to see this film. The first half of the film is better than the second I guess still because this is when the movie drags on some occasions. Lead actor is Michael Lott and he is probably not as known to German audiences as some of his fellow cast members in here are and with that I am referring to Michael Kessler, Volker Michalowski, Tom Gerhardt or Désirée Nick. And his performance here will not make him as famous sadly. I do believe he is physically fine for the character, a hardware story employee stuck between hopelessness and hopefulness who may (or may not) get a better life. But the drama is really just secondary here I guess, even if it (with the whole romance story) tries to be primary at times. It is mostly about the comedy, which you probably already suspected looking at the names I mentioned. Unfortunately, most of the comedy is not working out that well and there wasn't a single moment where I really laughed out loud. Occasional smiling is just not enough for a film of this runtime. With Lott, my main problem was probably that I felt he showed us the same face expression for the entire film and I really would have hoped to see some more mimics. Then again, for the most part, the script is not really doing him any favors here. In my opinion, this was not a particularly good film, nowhere near the best of what German film had to offer from last year. I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.