"Meine Nachbarn mit dem dicken Hund", which means "My neighbors with the fat dog", is a German television film from 2019, actually July 2019, so this is pretty much exactly a year old now, minimally over, but probably way over when you read this review which is probably going to be a little while, maybe even years, after I wrote this review. Welcome though! I runs for 1.5 hours, minimally under, and is the most recent filmmaking credit for director Ingo Rasper, who has been in the indutsry for over 15 years now, but sadly his body of work (already before this film even) does not imply a lot of quality, so the outcome here is not surprising at all. Writer Kathi Liers is not nearly as prolific as her director here, but she has also been in the industry for over five years without a lot of quality to be honest. So yeah, this film was kinda doomed from the beginning. This is really a bit of a pity because the lead actress this time is Steffi Kühnert and I have seen her in some other stuff too and I think she is not untalented. Pretty sad that she has to play on smaller/crappy television series here in Germany and her characters aren't even protagonists, so it is a fresh improvement to see her play the central character in a "real" movie for once again after the successes she has had in the past. So I really wanted this to be a success, but it simply isn't possible with the screenplay. It is too bad, too flawed. There are many scenes that are evidence of that, but not just at the real core of the movie, but it is also completely lacking in terms of attention to detail. As für Kühnert, I still think she manages to elevate the material here and there and make it watchable. It would definitely have been an even worse film with 99% of other actresses for the lead, especially if we only include those you usually find in these crappy small screen productions here in my country, even if this is for once not an ARD Degeto production. Anyway, everything that Kühnert does right, Zoë Valks does wrong. She is much younger and the closest to a co-lead, althouggh I would still call her supporting. ure you could say that she gave a good performance because it is really easy to hate her character, but this is not the case. Not a good performance at all. She went shamelessly over the top in her scenes that were allready written poorly and she still took it down another level. The guy also must be a fool if he still comes back to her with how she treats him during that specific scene in the bathroom. But hey, if you have seen how men are written in these films, you can impossibly be surprised. They are only considered likable if they 100% obey to their women and literally serve them you could almost say. This is what the fella does here. He really should have ditched her. But hey, then of course he would have been the bad guy and let's not even started what would have happened if he found another girlfriend. And back to the younger neighbor, her behavior towards Kühnert's character is also on a level where you should wonder why Kühnert even helps her. we all have our strugggles. Okay, she is a single-parent, but still. No justification for why she does and says what she does and says and she will always in the long run humiliate everybody around her, but still then hope for everybody to help her, like when she randomly screams out at her workplace that daughter is gone.
Yep, the girl ran away and the reason is that she was looking for her dog. The dog ran away earlier too and that homeless/drinking fella on one occasion is completely correct in saying that this women tends to lose a lot really. This should be enough on the neighbor character. Back to Kühnert's: her husband ran away from her months ago okay and he is a police officer and when the police comes to see her, then it is him standing there. Not anybody else? Why? Or was it a friend? At least he knew Kühnert's character and as the film was taking place in a big city, that is unrealistic enough for me. In the title of my review I said already that I did not like the ending at all and this mostly refers to the dog story. Yeah right, the girl loves the dog so much, but is perfectly fine with giving her to another family. Nah. The dog's name was kinda fun though. I give them that. But was the "actor" really a female dog. Towards the end, it looked as if there were balls, but maybe I am wrong here. Still, the lack of attention to detail is so shallow here that even such a major flaw would not have surprised me. Also at the end, there is closure with the swimming pool situation and this moment when everybody in some triumphant marching in sequence comes into the water with the main character. That was so pseudo important, so cringeworthy that I had absolutely nno doubts anymore that this was not just a weak film, but a really bad movie and no matter how much I like Kühnert, there is no denying at all. Other scenes that were a bit more dramatic and felt forced were the horror film sequence (of course the other woman shows up that very moment and Valks' character's reaction was so ridiculously stupid there, made no sense at all because indeed Kühnert's character just helped and saved the situation), the scene after the girl steals dog food or something and also the mother-son conversations about his father and how he knows all and the general idea how the main character told nothing about her failed marriage at work. Or well, that was okay, but the trip to Canada sceen was just a bad joke. So was the big argument between the main character and her best friend at the pub/restaurant. There was so much wrong with this movie I cannot put it all into this review before the character limit happens. Then again, I do not really want to because what I want the most is forget about this film as quickly as possible. Big thumbs-down for almost everything/everybody that was a part of this project. Most of all the script and the overall outcome. Highly not recommended!
Yep, the girl ran away and the reason is that she was looking for her dog. The dog ran away earlier too and that homeless/drinking fella on one occasion is completely correct in saying that this women tends to lose a lot really. This should be enough on the neighbor character. Back to Kühnert's: her husband ran away from her months ago okay and he is a police officer and when the police comes to see her, then it is him standing there. Not anybody else? Why? Or was it a friend? At least he knew Kühnert's character and as the film was taking place in a big city, that is unrealistic enough for me. In the title of my review I said already that I did not like the ending at all and this mostly refers to the dog story. Yeah right, the girl loves the dog so much, but is perfectly fine with giving her to another family. Nah. The dog's name was kinda fun though. I give them that. But was the "actor" really a female dog. Towards the end, it looked as if there were balls, but maybe I am wrong here. Still, the lack of attention to detail is so shallow here that even such a major flaw would not have surprised me. Also at the end, there is closure with the swimming pool situation and this moment when everybody in some triumphant marching in sequence comes into the water with the main character. That was so pseudo important, so cringeworthy that I had absolutely nno doubts anymore that this was not just a weak film, but a really bad movie and no matter how much I like Kühnert, there is no denying at all. Other scenes that were a bit more dramatic and felt forced were the horror film sequence (of course the other woman shows up that very moment and Valks' character's reaction was so ridiculously stupid there, made no sense at all because indeed Kühnert's character just helped and saved the situation), the scene after the girl steals dog food or something and also the mother-son conversations about his father and how he knows all and the general idea how the main character told nothing about her failed marriage at work. Or well, that was okay, but the trip to Canada sceen was just a bad joke. So was the big argument between the main character and her best friend at the pub/restaurant. There was so much wrong with this movie I cannot put it all into this review before the character limit happens. Then again, I do not really want to because what I want the most is forget about this film as quickly as possible. Big thumbs-down for almost everything/everybody that was a part of this project. Most of all the script and the overall outcome. Highly not recommended!
