For a German comedy.
German comedies are almost non-existent. Dietl is one of the exceptional directors for this stuff.
Well, so and so. I can imagine that anyone from outside of Germany won't find this one very funny; though someone who is acquainted with the main actors could. Gottschalk is a lousy actor, but here he just has to play himself, and that's very much okay. The second hero, Harald Schmidt, has been a successful copy of any late night Leno or Letterman on German TV. Veronika Ferres is one of the worst actors in Germany, and even that fits in this movie: she IS a bad actress. Foreign people would enjoy a former well-known comedian from Cologne being the doctor who give him a jab of morphine to sleep for around 12 hours, and in any dubbing, the southern, alpine, accent of the money man wouldn't work.
I can imagine that the whole lot comes across as a 5, or maximum of 6/10 for the uninitiated foreign viewer. And it could creep up to maybe even 10/10 for those who know Cologne, German private TV business and especially the heroes. Meaning, I could enjoy almost the whole lot simply by being able to understand the self-irony. The I-don't-take-myself-any-serious-in-this-plot attitude of those who kind of play themselves, and the daily fights in their original, similar, positions.
I can imagine that the whole lot comes across as a 5, or maximum of 6/10 for the uninitiated foreign viewer. And it could creep up to maybe even 10/10 for those who know Cologne, German private TV business and especially the heroes. Meaning, I could enjoy almost the whole lot simply by being able to understand the self-irony. The I-don't-take-myself-any-serious-in-this-plot attitude of those who kind of play themselves, and the daily fights in their original, similar, positions.