The other reviewers (two at the time of writing) seem to have agonised a lot over the moral issues about journalists intruding on people's lives. I didn't. In fact I really liked the film, which is light-hearted and not to be taken over seriously. (I say that as someone who has lived in eastern Germany and takes the deaths at the Wall, etc, very seriously indeed.) The film might have been subtitled "Goodbye Lenin II", as there are a lot of similarities. As far as the intrusion on the Honeckers is concerned, I wasn't too bothered, as they deserved a lot worse than to be be briefly disturbed and deceived in what looks like rather a comfortable exile. The two of them had done far, far worse things to a large number of other people, all the while failing to show any awareness of, let alone repentance for, their terrible crimes. Yes, it's true that Johann chickens out of really confronting Honecker for the sake of photos to further his own career. Max Bretschneider is excellent in the part of Johann and the actors playing the Honeckers are great too, despite the male actor not looking much like him. What I liked less was the clichéd sub-plot with the girfriend and her family. Someone at the production company thought that a dose of love interest was called for and then decided to top that by giving the girlfriend a brother killed by Honecker's regime. A bit crass.
Review of Willkommen bei den Honeckers
Willkommen bei den Honeckers
(2017 TV Movie)
Great for fans of Goodbye Lenin
20 November 2019
Warning: Spoilers