User Reviews

After seeing the movie I was baffled it got advertised as a comedy. The only laughs in it is Martina Gedecks cynical, helpless snickering about her unhappiness in the pretty amateurish therapy sessions. But lets start at the beginning. Gedeck is a wife and mother with a sick, pale face, eerily dead eyes and lots of nervous mannerisms who is shocked that her dull, overweight husband is having an affair with a young coworker. It is rather shocking, since she is a rather strange woman who never combs her hair and has a strangely dumb, absent minded look on her face. I know I sound nasty, but I was buffled about how ugly and plain, or overdressed and somewhat silly everybody looks in the movie. The only attractive person is the veteran actress who plays the therapist, and she is around 70 - but she radiates the intelligence and contemptness the whole movie, including its garish, drab photography, lacks. The high strung and annoyingly superficial characters engage in the usual mini dramas and screaming fits, which are pretty hilarious considering that they life in a posh designer house, have both good and interesting jobs and no truly serious problems. I guess that is the problem - they are both spoiled and have everything in life, but fail to realize that. Instead they engage in childish fights e.g. about how they never did that trip to Egypt they planned once. Going to Egypt? Now? Are you kidding me? Their children and friends are equally unpleasent. The son is a student who only cares about expensive clothing and playing golf, the daughter is a weird and somewhat loudmouth and know it all, who has no education in the field but wants to run an office as a posh life counsellor. Both seem pretty happy living of their parents money, though. The couples best friends are a girlish, prematurely aged TV journalist caked in too much make up and her submissive, weak husband. The wives new lover is a nihilistic narcissist only playing with her using pseudo philosophical ramblings about the meaninglessness of live and the usual love bombing / devaluing strategies. She loves it, which was rather painful to watch. In the end, the family dog dies, and for the first time in the movie the family shows some true emotions. But were they really mourning him or their hollow, shallow lifes? The narcissist choses the daughter as his next victim, which she loves (like mother, like daughter?), the dumb coworker leaves the husband because he is not her dream lover at all (what a surprise), and the wife decides that running an artsy fartsy online blog about her work at the museum will be her path to true happiness. Good Luck. Her first post is a video showing her running through the exhibition screaming, trying to steal objects and playing catch me if you can with the baffled guards. The world of online journalism has probably just been waiting for this. Maybe she should try recreational drugs instead? At least it would give her weird behaviour some explanation. So, if you want to engage is some masochism and get a detailled account of the wrecked, wretched lives of Hamburgs rich and beautiful upper class, go for it. Otherwise, this movie is a waste of time and talent.

"Und wer nimmt den Hund?" (title already a failed attempt at humor), which means "And who takes the dog?", is a German German-language film from 2019. They went with a completely different internnational title here, namely "Lost in Separation", which is pretty shameful because this title is probably linked to one of my favorite films of all time. But yeah well, they apparently thought that with this film here they really delivered quality. The opposite is the case, in terms of both family drama and comedic moments. This film had its wide release back in August 2019 here in my counttry I think, so it is really not an old film, but the fact that it took only slightly over a year for it to be shown on smaller German television stations says it all. And it was not even shown during prime time, but at half past noon. Nuff said. This is a slot where you almost never see any quality whatsoever here and this film is definitely not an exception. It fits right in with all the Degeto trash. Lead actors Tukur and Gedeck (she is credited first though for whatever reason, I think they are equals) have been in many German big screen releases, but yeah television is booming enough in Germany right no for big names to also appear in small screen releases, so they did that too, even if this one here is, like I stated earlier, a theatrical release. The rest of the cast do not really deserve the mention. With one, maybe two exceptions. Lucie Heinze is mildly attractive, but that was her only purpose here I suppose. Marcel Hensema was indeed a positive surprise no denying. His screen time was limited, but he did not do worse than the two big names playing protagonists and he did so despite some extremely poor riting for his character. I will get to that later. His last shot with a new potential love interest is also kinda nicely done. Really a surprising last shot as it features neither Tukur nor Gedeck and Hensema's character I actually did not expect back on the screen. Anyway, this is really all for the cast. Nothing to say about the rest. I think the actors were really the smallest probably here. They are all fairly alright, but the story is so exaggerated and unauthentic that it is simply too much and not even the best actors could have made this film work. Admittedly, it probably would have been even worse with less talented actors all along. A for the crew, a few words on the two key players: Rainer Kaufmann is the director, pretty experienced, and lately he worked mostly on these German region-based crime comedies. They are frequently alright and maybe this is where he should focus on. Writer is Martin Rauhaus. Shocking to see a guy who has been in the industry since the early 1990s, is over 60 now and still comes up with stuff like that. Utter absence of talent and quality. I guess it is for good reason why he as stuck with television projects for decades. This one here certainly does not justify and more big screen releases including him as the key writer.

I wanna give you a few examples about the story now why I think this film sucks. The attention to detail is not good, but the biggest problem is that there is such a gigantic quantity of weak moments that felt over the top that it is impossible to take these slightly under 1.5 hours seriously at all. Or appreciate them from a comedic perspective. I would say it is still tolerable in the first half, maybe almmost first hour, but the longer it goes the weaker it becomes. Just take the male protagonist's collapse during the session on one occasion. Also the shots at creativity like with the eels or the black and white balls were not really successful. But not the worst. The orst is the lack of authenticity. Like we got the male protagonist's younger lover now and he says they want to move in together. And quickly afterwards the relationship is over. Gedeck's character also gets a new love interest and after a most cringeworthy and exaggerated escalation at a restaurant that is also a thing of the past. Or that the dog dies. So nobody takes it. I know it happens often in the movies, but here it added absolutely nothing. Or how the female protagonist mistakes the male protagonist for a robber on one occasion, almost knocks him down. Or how the two end up in bed again having sex. There are maybe three more examples where less would have been definitely more, but this film is the opposite of quietly convincing. Loudly annoying if you want to call it that. It needed subtlety badly. That much is safe, but I guess the talent in screen writing just wasn't there. Also another thing this has in common with all the Degeto stuff that is shown day in, day out is that it feels extremely anti-male. The husband was the cheater of course. He took a younger lover. He is the one needy enough to want to get together with Gedeck's character in the end again, but that really would have been too much. Still bad enough. She of course is self-confident enough to refuse the offer and stay on her own for now. I was actually surprised she even had to say something positive about him. Oh well, probably only because Tukur is a lead in here and big name actor too. And the women are depicted in a good light. Even the younger lover seeks depth and meaning and eventually does not want to stay with her lover. Or the reliable best friend who is always there for Gedeck's character and wants to know about her sex life. While talking about such superficial stuff, let me say that while I am not always too sure about if Gedeck is really as talented as people want us to believe she is, she still looks pretty amazing for her age. Oh yes, as for the anti-male discrimination, the example ith the new lover in the female protagonist's life is telling enough, how he has his meltdown, but also how he flirts with his lover's best friend while the former is sitting right next to him. He is just another horny dog errr. male you could say. Pretty despicable and shallow stuff. If it was the other around, women's rights activists would be all up in arms. Now that is what i call gender discrimination. Even worse that the screenplay comes from a guy. But kinda telling. So yeah, all in all, this is definitely a botched movie. A lot wrong with this one although the song we hear in the end (Ringo?) is pretty nice. That's the only positive thing I can say. The song that plays earlier on more than one occasion also does nothing for me. Also the entire concept of having these sessions in-between while life goes on was executed pretty poorly. You never really know what is up and it simply does not fit in at all. Certainly a wasted opportunity for a movie. This one here gets a big thumbs-down. Highly not recommende and if you want to watch an acctually good film on the sujbject, I suggest you go for the 2018 film "Die Wunderübung" instead.