The acting was exceptionally well for a German movie - I don't know if I just notice bad acting more easily when it's in German (it is my mother tongue after all) or if it's really rare in the German film biz to have good actors. Anyway, in this movie it was well done (and if I think about Stipe Erceg in "Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei" that's also not always the case in Weingartner's movies). Unfortunately the actors had to fight with cliché after cliché being thrust upon them. The cocaine-sniffing, not giving a damn about anything media guy, the socio phobic computer nerd who spends his time with conspiracy theories (by the way, Weingartner should probably talk with the psychiatric association - he obviously has buried somewhere in his movie a miraculous cure for a psychosis, seeing as Philipp is socio phobic and then a couple of weeks later he isn't anymore, not really anyway) and the revolutionary who is just a hurt little girl inside. Characterisation gets a little better towards the end, at least for the main characters. Sadly, it's not enough to give them any depth.
The directing style was very conservative - the initial characterisation of Rainer, the news paper clips or the raid - there's nothing we haven't seen before. It's not badly directed but in connection with the "revolutionary" content (not the content itself being revolutionary - we've all seen movies about the bad bad media biz, but the film being about revolution) it could have used some more revolutionary directing. As in "Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei" (I'm sorry for the constant comparison between those two movies but they are so similar, not only in style but also in content that it just forces itself on me :), Weingartner uses lengthy monologues to explain why revolution is good/necessary/the thing to do, which can and does get boring. Fortunately, there are some funny scenes, although he sometimes tries too hard.
The morale of the story is inconsequential at best. Because it obviously is a victory for everybody that people stop watching TV altogether to read books or to go for a walk: So bad TV makes people stupid and good TV makes people stop watching TV? Also, Rainer stresses more than once that you should trust people to be able to handle intelligent TV. But by manipulating the quota, he doesn't even give them a choice. Isn't his approach to force-feed them the good stuff as bad as force-feed them the bad stuff?
The directing style was very conservative - the initial characterisation of Rainer, the news paper clips or the raid - there's nothing we haven't seen before. It's not badly directed but in connection with the "revolutionary" content (not the content itself being revolutionary - we've all seen movies about the bad bad media biz, but the film being about revolution) it could have used some more revolutionary directing. As in "Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei" (I'm sorry for the constant comparison between those two movies but they are so similar, not only in style but also in content that it just forces itself on me :), Weingartner uses lengthy monologues to explain why revolution is good/necessary/the thing to do, which can and does get boring. Fortunately, there are some funny scenes, although he sometimes tries too hard.
The morale of the story is inconsequential at best. Because it obviously is a victory for everybody that people stop watching TV altogether to read books or to go for a walk: So bad TV makes people stupid and good TV makes people stop watching TV? Also, Rainer stresses more than once that you should trust people to be able to handle intelligent TV. But by manipulating the quota, he doesn't even give them a choice. Isn't his approach to force-feed them the good stuff as bad as force-feed them the bad stuff?