Review of Kaptn Oskar

Kaptn Oskar (2013)
6/10
Just alright
8 February 2018
This movie wasn't as good as I'd hoped, but still it was not terrible. It feels just like a typical low-budget romance film about two people in their twenties that we've seen a hundred times before. It's nothing new and nothing special, really.

It's the type of film where a young man and woman go through the ups and downs of their relationship over the course of a few months while trying to navigate through their lives and their insignificant troubles and misplaced angst. It's the type of film where the climax consists of the main characters going on a camping trip, and to answer your next question: yes, there is a ukulele which makes an appearance at one point.

It's the type of film in which not much happens, which isn't always a bad thing, but sometimes it can be. It's the type of film that someone would probably enjoy only if they had very recently experienced very similar relationship problems. And I hadn't, so I didn't.

It actually plays out just like a collection of scenes featuring these two main characters. The order of the scenes doesn't always matter, and it often feels like they were placed in that order somewhat arbitrarily. The scenes are most definitely not in chronological order all the time, and it's difficult to tell when flashbacks occur, but it doesn't really matter either way. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but again, this film really has nothing great to offer.

For some reason, almost every scene includes exactly one odd jump cut, which feels accidental at first, then awkward for a while, before finally feeling appropriate, once we've gotten used to it. But if you pause the film to go take a dump, for example, or to make tea, then the jump cuts will feel weird again when you return.

A couple things I should add are that the acting seems good and realistic and also the two main actors aren't beautiful people, which is nice. I like it when they put regular-looking people in movies, because it feels more like real life. The main actress is only mildly attractive and feels like a real person with real problems, and the main actor is downright goofy-looking, if you ask me. But that doesn't mean they should make a movie about them. But at the same time I feel like: hey it was worth a try!

One more thing I should add is that it feels quite a lot like many American films I've seen, but it's not an American film. It's German. So that's something kinda unique about it. Not exactly what I expected. I guess the director, who also wrote and starred in the film, was probably inspired by a lot of American films that are like this and wanted to make one of his own (or two or three, looking at his other credits). Maybe it was semiautobiographical, who knows! German people fall in love too, don't they?

I don't know if there are a lot of other German films that are like this one, but this is the first one I've seen. It felt more like an American film than the German films I have seen, with two major exceptions: 1) the characters all speak in German; and 2) the main character often wears this ridiculous, loose-fitting shirt with a floral pattern that you would never see on a man in America, and certainly not a man with a girlfriend.
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