"Eine Hochzeit platzt selten allein" is a German television film from summer 2019, so this one is approximately 1.5 years old and still relatively recent. It runs for slightly under 1.5 hours as they usually do and this is another ARD movie, which means it had its premiere on ARD and is now shown on several occasions on the smaller ARD channels like One where it ended a few minutes ago. The director is Lancelot von Naso, who started making full feature films in the late 00s, so a bit of an anniversary for him here. Not one to be proud of if we see this film as some kind of celebration. Yes, it was a really poor watch. I will explain why later on. Let's stay with the basics for now: von Naso sometimes also wrote the screenplays for his films, but not so this time. The got Jürgen Werner and Christoph Sonntag for that here. As for Sonntag, this is his first writing credit. He is a successful comedian and being a co-writer here was a completely new area of expertise for him and I genuinely hope that, if he ever returns to screenplay writing, he will step up his craft. He also acts in here by the way. Also hasn't happened too often before. As for Jürgen Werner, definitely the key writer here, he is far more experienced. But his body of work makes it pretty obvious what to expect here, namely the opposite of convincing quality. So, what has he been a part of? Inga Lindström. Tatort. Das Traumschiff. Kreuzfahrt ins Glück. Herzflimmern. Okay, I think this is enough. You get the message. It is embarrassing that he still gets employed for new screenplays and movies. An absolutely abysmal body of work to be honest. And finally, let's move on to the cast. I am a bit undecided there. There are so many characters in here that it is really impossible to say we have one lead or anything. It's an ensemble performance, but not a good one. Inka Friedrich is first credit and her I have seen in several other films and I think she is almost completely free of talent. The good news is that, as I just stated, she is not really at the center of this movie. Nobody is. Her love interest is played by Oliver Wnuk and this is already difficult to believe, not only because he is ten years younger, but also because he looks younger than he is, so it feels more like 15 years or even more. I know Wnuk from Stromberg of course and I loved that show, but in him I never see much. Maybe that fact that his character there is pretty unlikable is also something subjective for me why I don't really like him in anything else. His role selection is not exactly something to be proud of either, but maybe he is not to blame here and he just is not getting any better offers. Could be true today, but I am sure he could have appeared in better films directly after Stromberg. Oh well, at least he got really lucky in terms of his partner in life. Herbert Knaup is an actor I almost always like, but still it must be said that he is not doing himself any favors to appear in films like this one. They are written so poorly that not even he can make an impact here and change the film for the better. Child actress Ella Lee I am not too familiar with. I see she was in Dark as well, a really successful recent series. Haven't watched that one (yet). Brandner has been in some pretty decent films, props to him, but he was also wasted here like pretty much everybody else. And finally Ludger Pistor is an actor I like quite a bit and I also think they could have done more with him here. Really a pity. I mean he acted in a Bond movie and several other good films in the past. Why is he so wasted here. Oh yeah, Udo Schenk, a bit of an antagonist here, has been part of the In aller Freundschaft team for a long time. It's a terrible show, so cast members from that one being a part of this film here is nothing exactly to be proud of, even if you can still say probably that Schenk is not among the worst from that show. Besides, they also got some people to play themselves like the news lady, but also a pretty familiar face from the ARD comedy/satire branch. Don't remember the name now, but I am talking about this lanky, light-haired felly you will immediately recognize when you see him. Pierre M. Krause. There you go. Never thought he was funny at all, so no surprise he would show up in low films like this one here. Apart from him/that, these news broadcast reenactments were also pretty much on the try-hard side and felt fairly fake.
Now the problem with this film here is that it really tries to be a lot and ends up being nothing basically. Good focus is missing entirely from beginning to end and luckily it is not a 100-minute movie or something. This movie constantly feels all over the place. There are so many characters in here that they could have used them all for a miniseries or something, but pretty much not a single character here gets the prope elaboration they deserve. The exception are maybe Lee's and Knaup's characters, but these are not a vital part of the story. They are just there to inform the audience about all that went on. Well, Lee's is. Knaup's has even less purpose. He just finds out what was going on at the exact same time as we don. So this framework in the now feels like filler material overall and is still among the better aspects of this film, which says basically all about the quality here. This is of course also once again an ARD Degeto film and means more GEZ money gut burned for this project. It is never funny although it tries so hard to be entertaining. It's just messed up. Another component that falls really flat, which is maybe even more crucial, is that nothing about this film makes sense. It already starts with the idea that apparently millions of people watched this girl's recording, while in reality it would have been hundreds. If at all. Probably not and only her friends could have seen it and not even all of them either. But what are they telling us here? This turns into an international money crisis. Yeah, right. Is this some kind of financial butterfly effect? Well, that's what they want us to believe here at least, but it just feels absolutely unauthentic and unrealistic. And as I said earlier, it is not even fun. Not one bit. This was just as bad. Knaup's character as some really influential official may not have been part of the plot really (so he had basically no reason to even be in this movie and for that they waste such a decent actor) also did not feel too credible during this interrogation. The milkshake running gag is not funny at all and neither is that the owner of the place wants cash in the end. Of course, mother (Friedrich) also shows up randomly there. So the real question is, why did they not go to the girl's home, maybe talk to her in the presence of her mom? So strange where this took place. But maybe it's okay because at least the unwatchable Friedrich was not part of the interrogation scenes this way. And what was up with the final question from Knaup's character that she can always contact him if she wants to make an internship at his place. But of course or cool little girl businesswoman is too cool for that. Sigh. I did not say yet that there are also some slightly more serious romance-related plots here about a man cancelling a wedding right before it takes place, a surprise pregnancy, Friedrich's character's relationship fears etc. I stated earlier already that this film really wants to be so much: dramatically relevant, funny and entertaining, a decent satire and that is maybe not even all of that. Pity though that with almost everybody involved here the talent is considerably too small to make this project work and this especially applies to the two writers. This is a film you definitely wanna skip. The okay moments weren't even too rare for me to call it just a weak movie. Reality is that what we have here is a film that is so poor that it never should have been made. Massive thumbs-down. Oh and I almost forgot: The use of music here was also not utterly creative. Pink Floyd's "Money" is an amazing song, but really too obvious and too much for the sake of it here, especially if they use it twice. Johnny Cash I like, but his inclusion also doesn't do too much for me. And the German song, oh well... So yeah, not even in this department it was a good watch. Or listen.
Now the problem with this film here is that it really tries to be a lot and ends up being nothing basically. Good focus is missing entirely from beginning to end and luckily it is not a 100-minute movie or something. This movie constantly feels all over the place. There are so many characters in here that they could have used them all for a miniseries or something, but pretty much not a single character here gets the prope elaboration they deserve. The exception are maybe Lee's and Knaup's characters, but these are not a vital part of the story. They are just there to inform the audience about all that went on. Well, Lee's is. Knaup's has even less purpose. He just finds out what was going on at the exact same time as we don. So this framework in the now feels like filler material overall and is still among the better aspects of this film, which says basically all about the quality here. This is of course also once again an ARD Degeto film and means more GEZ money gut burned for this project. It is never funny although it tries so hard to be entertaining. It's just messed up. Another component that falls really flat, which is maybe even more crucial, is that nothing about this film makes sense. It already starts with the idea that apparently millions of people watched this girl's recording, while in reality it would have been hundreds. If at all. Probably not and only her friends could have seen it and not even all of them either. But what are they telling us here? This turns into an international money crisis. Yeah, right. Is this some kind of financial butterfly effect? Well, that's what they want us to believe here at least, but it just feels absolutely unauthentic and unrealistic. And as I said earlier, it is not even fun. Not one bit. This was just as bad. Knaup's character as some really influential official may not have been part of the plot really (so he had basically no reason to even be in this movie and for that they waste such a decent actor) also did not feel too credible during this interrogation. The milkshake running gag is not funny at all and neither is that the owner of the place wants cash in the end. Of course, mother (Friedrich) also shows up randomly there. So the real question is, why did they not go to the girl's home, maybe talk to her in the presence of her mom? So strange where this took place. But maybe it's okay because at least the unwatchable Friedrich was not part of the interrogation scenes this way. And what was up with the final question from Knaup's character that she can always contact him if she wants to make an internship at his place. But of course or cool little girl businesswoman is too cool for that. Sigh. I did not say yet that there are also some slightly more serious romance-related plots here about a man cancelling a wedding right before it takes place, a surprise pregnancy, Friedrich's character's relationship fears etc. I stated earlier already that this film really wants to be so much: dramatically relevant, funny and entertaining, a decent satire and that is maybe not even all of that. Pity though that with almost everybody involved here the talent is considerably too small to make this project work and this especially applies to the two writers. This is a film you definitely wanna skip. The okay moments weren't even too rare for me to call it just a weak movie. Reality is that what we have here is a film that is so poor that it never should have been made. Massive thumbs-down. Oh and I almost forgot: The use of music here was also not utterly creative. Pink Floyd's "Money" is an amazing song, but really too obvious and too much for the sake of it here, especially if they use it twice. Johnny Cash I like, but his inclusion also doesn't do too much for me. And the German song, oh well... So yeah, not even in this department it was a good watch. Or listen.
