It's great news that this film was not really seen by many at all as you can see from the ratings here on imdb, but there is no justification whatseover for this still being show on national television 20 years after its original release. This is the anniversary this film is going to have in September and if I see it correctly, this actually was shown for the very first time three days after the terrorist attack? People really suffered enough back then, but no mercy apparently. Okay, let's stay with the basics: the title is "Das Weibernest" and it is a bit difficult to translate into English because of the word "Weib". It is a term for a woman, usually not a particularly young woman, that can be meant in a derogatory manner, but this is not always the case. Here it is not obviously because this is a film for female audiences and they also call themselves like that. It can also stand for experienced women who have achieved something in life you could say. It's basically only okay if women use the term for themselves, just like the N word and Black people using it for themselves, which makes also no sense, but that is another story. This is based on a book by Hera Lind and yes, this means you can expect the worst really. Or have to. If you have seen, Ferres' Superweib, then you know what it means. Apparently, Lind also used some of her own background here as this is the story of a writer getting her own talk show. But I will elaborate on the contents later on.
Axel Staeck is the writer who turned said book into a screenplay. It is neother one of his earliest or latest works, but seeing his filmography, I would say that it all sucks and I see no quality with him whatsoever. Good news is that (according to imdb) he has not worked on any new screenplays in almost a decade. Let's hope it stays that way. The director of these almost 1.5 hours (the usual running time for ARD television films) is Karola Hattop. No excuse for her at all. She is over 70 now and she has not made one good movie I believe and never will, so she is basically the female equivalent to the writer here, only that she has five times as many credits as Staeck. And with such an abysmal body of work, it means quite something that this film here is a definite contender for worst career effort from her. Truly unwatchable. The cast includes a handful familiar faces: Susanne Uhlen may be at the center of it all, but she is not too famous. Or not anymore, at least not in 2021. Dana Vávrová, who plays the best friend here, died a long time ago sadly. I know she was in some ambitious films early in her career, which is why I find it fairly sad to see her in utter garbage like this movie we have here. Axel Milberg is maybe the most familiar face nowadays because of his Tatort episodes, but yeah I never thought he was as good as people said he was and this film here is really a great example of how his career is not flawless and his role selection also sucks on many occasions. I think he's pretty overrated and Tatort sucks anyway by the way.
Same applies to the heute-show. Why do I say that? Because we have the pretty young Alexander Schubert in here, a regular on said heute-show and you can see his utter absence of talent during this movie and it is pretty telling that guys like him and the one who played Hassknecht are basically failed actors. Not in the sense that they cannot get any roles, but rather in the sense that they have been part of many abysmal films. And this is what GEZ money is used for. Awesome. So yeah, if you need any prove that the heute-show sucks, these two I just mentioned bring the evidence with the other stuff they have been a part of. And don't even get me started on Welke. Erich Hallhuber, who plays a key male character in here got as unlucky as Vávrová and passed away a long time ago. The one who outlived them both is Nadja Tiller, who is over the age of 90 now. She plays Milberg's character's mother if I got it correctly. Really a nothing performance for the most part and when she had crucial moments, it makes no sense like why would she tell her daughter-in-law about said daughter-in-law's best friend being pregnant? I don't even. You cannot blame the actors here for not making this work. Nobody could have. But you can blame them for accepting the parts because it was 100% clear there would never be any artistic quality to this film. This applies to the small moments as well as the key plots. Take the When Harry Met Sally reenactment. 100% cringe and I think even Milberg was ashamed during this moment.
Or take the idea of the two female friends being pregnant from the same guy at the exact same time. Giving birth on the exact same day, exact same hour. Holding their babies the exact same moment after also ending up in the same room at the hospital. It's a small world for sure. Isn't it ridiculous enough even that Uhlen's character has sex with her friend's man and she does not know it obviously? By the way, Uhlen really made these crying moments unwatchable too, so she managed the impossible to make the already terrible script seem even worse. Also pay attention to how he wants to kiss her and she initially does not respond. Then he returns and they have sex and Uhlen's character gets pregnant immediately. Birth control not really a thing huh? And the actress was 45 when she made this movie, so made it feel even more like complete nonsense. This is a production by Regina Ziegler and ARD Degeto, the two worst companies in the existence of German film and they always have anti-male tendencies included and here it could not be any more obvious. Males, as a whole, are verbally insulted before the ten-minute mark if I remember correctly. The guys have to beg for the females' attention and if they don't , then they are not worthy of the women. Basically, they with their businesses and everything only get in the way of the women's ambitions anyway like one being an aspiring fashion designer here. Of course, we also see the fashion show towards the end out of nowhere.
Besides, the two are such good friends, but they lost touch and what's the explanation? Yeah, they kept moving and of course they cared so much for each other that they constantly wrote letters, but none of them got through as a consequence. Yeah right, the actions of the females are so justified and appropriate all the time. But hey, when Milberg's character early on wants to marry for tax reasons, Uhlen's character is not happy at all. He shall love her. Deeply. And moments later, the two break up and Milberg's character vanishes for almost the rest of the film before in the end he returns to beg her to take him back. By the way, when the two women are in the hospital beds after giving birth, they solve their struggles and again it's all about the anti-male component again how they talk to the babies' father immediately afterwards. He has no option to veto what they are saying. He must obey. His talk show story was also a big bad joke by the way, how he relies on Uhlen's character when she does everything wrong. This was by the way not funny at all. And yet she is the one to blackmail him that the thingey inside her ear comes out and she does her own thing. And he has to obey because otherwise she quits. And that is a bad thing why exactly? She has no hosting experience whatsoever. She is very clumsy. But moments later she is of course an awesome host. Sure thing. There we have more lack of realism.
Take the moment her son somehow manages to get through and ask her a question live on air. Again, very realistic. We have many children in here and the child actors are all terrible too. But again, the writing is to blame too. Take the idea how the boy constantly wreaks havoc on the guy who makes her this offer with the talk show. So unfunny and in the scene with the water, you could really see how Hallhuber's character was intentionally moving his head to where he would get the full load, so the camera catches it this way. The girl climbing the stage early on (how funny and cute!) was also ridiculously bad. Or take the moment when the boy makes a reference to the female protagonist's life and how it is not the same as her book. Pseudo-important. Just like the soundtrack that was absolutely nothing but loud and obnoxious and made this film way worse. Maybe this was the second worst thing about the movie after the script. My ears were crying really. Oh and when you wake up in a tent on some field, you always have a plane really close above your heads almost crashing into you, right? What wild lives they are leading! The handshake or whatever that was when the two women saw each other again was also so exaggerated and unwatchable. Uhlen went full ham there once more. Really limited actress.
Oh and of course the two women move in with each other right after they met for the first time again in years. Happens to all of us, doesn't it? Pay attention to a little note on a pin board saying "the pill for him" and that means birth control pill to emphasize the feminism component here. Disgusting. As I said, Uhlen's character here really did not care about the pill herself. Oh and of course she gets filmed the moment she tells the man it is his baby and Vávrová's character sees it. Also let's not even discuss Milberg's character not caring one bit that his women, while he was quickly gone, got pregnant and gave birth randomly. This movie haha. It's all wrong, but they actually want us to believe it's real and realistic. Or the scene in which the women talk about the word "Weibernest" referenced in the title. Or when she pays tribute to a makeup artist live on air to make a "smart" connection about making up with her friend. This was unwatchable and the imdb rating of 2.1 is still way too high. I just don't give out one-out-of-ten ratings. This film you want to skip 100% It is genuinely unwatchable. As I said, there is much more wrong with this one even than I mentioned already.
Axel Staeck is the writer who turned said book into a screenplay. It is neother one of his earliest or latest works, but seeing his filmography, I would say that it all sucks and I see no quality with him whatsoever. Good news is that (according to imdb) he has not worked on any new screenplays in almost a decade. Let's hope it stays that way. The director of these almost 1.5 hours (the usual running time for ARD television films) is Karola Hattop. No excuse for her at all. She is over 70 now and she has not made one good movie I believe and never will, so she is basically the female equivalent to the writer here, only that she has five times as many credits as Staeck. And with such an abysmal body of work, it means quite something that this film here is a definite contender for worst career effort from her. Truly unwatchable. The cast includes a handful familiar faces: Susanne Uhlen may be at the center of it all, but she is not too famous. Or not anymore, at least not in 2021. Dana Vávrová, who plays the best friend here, died a long time ago sadly. I know she was in some ambitious films early in her career, which is why I find it fairly sad to see her in utter garbage like this movie we have here. Axel Milberg is maybe the most familiar face nowadays because of his Tatort episodes, but yeah I never thought he was as good as people said he was and this film here is really a great example of how his career is not flawless and his role selection also sucks on many occasions. I think he's pretty overrated and Tatort sucks anyway by the way.
Same applies to the heute-show. Why do I say that? Because we have the pretty young Alexander Schubert in here, a regular on said heute-show and you can see his utter absence of talent during this movie and it is pretty telling that guys like him and the one who played Hassknecht are basically failed actors. Not in the sense that they cannot get any roles, but rather in the sense that they have been part of many abysmal films. And this is what GEZ money is used for. Awesome. So yeah, if you need any prove that the heute-show sucks, these two I just mentioned bring the evidence with the other stuff they have been a part of. And don't even get me started on Welke. Erich Hallhuber, who plays a key male character in here got as unlucky as Vávrová and passed away a long time ago. The one who outlived them both is Nadja Tiller, who is over the age of 90 now. She plays Milberg's character's mother if I got it correctly. Really a nothing performance for the most part and when she had crucial moments, it makes no sense like why would she tell her daughter-in-law about said daughter-in-law's best friend being pregnant? I don't even. You cannot blame the actors here for not making this work. Nobody could have. But you can blame them for accepting the parts because it was 100% clear there would never be any artistic quality to this film. This applies to the small moments as well as the key plots. Take the When Harry Met Sally reenactment. 100% cringe and I think even Milberg was ashamed during this moment.
Or take the idea of the two female friends being pregnant from the same guy at the exact same time. Giving birth on the exact same day, exact same hour. Holding their babies the exact same moment after also ending up in the same room at the hospital. It's a small world for sure. Isn't it ridiculous enough even that Uhlen's character has sex with her friend's man and she does not know it obviously? By the way, Uhlen really made these crying moments unwatchable too, so she managed the impossible to make the already terrible script seem even worse. Also pay attention to how he wants to kiss her and she initially does not respond. Then he returns and they have sex and Uhlen's character gets pregnant immediately. Birth control not really a thing huh? And the actress was 45 when she made this movie, so made it feel even more like complete nonsense. This is a production by Regina Ziegler and ARD Degeto, the two worst companies in the existence of German film and they always have anti-male tendencies included and here it could not be any more obvious. Males, as a whole, are verbally insulted before the ten-minute mark if I remember correctly. The guys have to beg for the females' attention and if they don't , then they are not worthy of the women. Basically, they with their businesses and everything only get in the way of the women's ambitions anyway like one being an aspiring fashion designer here. Of course, we also see the fashion show towards the end out of nowhere.
Besides, the two are such good friends, but they lost touch and what's the explanation? Yeah, they kept moving and of course they cared so much for each other that they constantly wrote letters, but none of them got through as a consequence. Yeah right, the actions of the females are so justified and appropriate all the time. But hey, when Milberg's character early on wants to marry for tax reasons, Uhlen's character is not happy at all. He shall love her. Deeply. And moments later, the two break up and Milberg's character vanishes for almost the rest of the film before in the end he returns to beg her to take him back. By the way, when the two women are in the hospital beds after giving birth, they solve their struggles and again it's all about the anti-male component again how they talk to the babies' father immediately afterwards. He has no option to veto what they are saying. He must obey. His talk show story was also a big bad joke by the way, how he relies on Uhlen's character when she does everything wrong. This was by the way not funny at all. And yet she is the one to blackmail him that the thingey inside her ear comes out and she does her own thing. And he has to obey because otherwise she quits. And that is a bad thing why exactly? She has no hosting experience whatsoever. She is very clumsy. But moments later she is of course an awesome host. Sure thing. There we have more lack of realism.
Take the moment her son somehow manages to get through and ask her a question live on air. Again, very realistic. We have many children in here and the child actors are all terrible too. But again, the writing is to blame too. Take the idea how the boy constantly wreaks havoc on the guy who makes her this offer with the talk show. So unfunny and in the scene with the water, you could really see how Hallhuber's character was intentionally moving his head to where he would get the full load, so the camera catches it this way. The girl climbing the stage early on (how funny and cute!) was also ridiculously bad. Or take the moment when the boy makes a reference to the female protagonist's life and how it is not the same as her book. Pseudo-important. Just like the soundtrack that was absolutely nothing but loud and obnoxious and made this film way worse. Maybe this was the second worst thing about the movie after the script. My ears were crying really. Oh and when you wake up in a tent on some field, you always have a plane really close above your heads almost crashing into you, right? What wild lives they are leading! The handshake or whatever that was when the two women saw each other again was also so exaggerated and unwatchable. Uhlen went full ham there once more. Really limited actress.
Oh and of course the two women move in with each other right after they met for the first time again in years. Happens to all of us, doesn't it? Pay attention to a little note on a pin board saying "the pill for him" and that means birth control pill to emphasize the feminism component here. Disgusting. As I said, Uhlen's character here really did not care about the pill herself. Oh and of course she gets filmed the moment she tells the man it is his baby and Vávrová's character sees it. Also let's not even discuss Milberg's character not caring one bit that his women, while he was quickly gone, got pregnant and gave birth randomly. This movie haha. It's all wrong, but they actually want us to believe it's real and realistic. Or the scene in which the women talk about the word "Weibernest" referenced in the title. Or when she pays tribute to a makeup artist live on air to make a "smart" connection about making up with her friend. This was unwatchable and the imdb rating of 2.1 is still way too high. I just don't give out one-out-of-ten ratings. This film you want to skip 100% It is genuinely unwatchable. As I said, there is much more wrong with this one even than I mentioned already.