Der Fischer und seine Frau (2005) User Reviews

Passable German comedy

[Andy-296 · 7/10 · 12 January 2011]

A passable contemporary adaptation of the Grimm's Brothers fairy tale. The movie begins in Japan, with Ida, a German hitchhiking girl (Alexandra Maria Lara, who played Hitler's secretary in Downfall) who has the ambition of becoming a fashion designer. There she meets a couple of her compatriots, who are in the business of importing tropical fish to Germany. Ida soon couples up with the nerdier of the two guys, Otto, who is a veterinarian. Eventually, they get married. Back in Germany, they have to struggle to make ends meet, as many young couples do. Though she still loves him, she berates him for what she perceives as a lack of ambition. Eventually, as in the fairy tale, one of the fish collected in Japan by Otto, will help her dreams come true: she becomes successful in the fashion business. But success always has a price: as she becomes successful, she more and more despises her husband and the marriage becomes estranged. But, of course, because this is a comedy, they will eventually come to terms and find back love. The movie is mildly diverting, but it has interesting points one can argue with: Is it wrong to have ambition, to want to progress in life? Is it always good to settle? You can argue with what this movie says, but is moderately entertaining. The fish keeping motif helps the movie a bit.

A childish fairy-tale

[Thom-Peters · 1/10 · 24 June 2010]

This is basically a very stereotypical love story. A man meets a woman, they marry and have to realize later on that they are very different, indeed opposites. Ida (Alexandra Maria Lara) is a petite fashion designer with lots of ambitions and plans, Otto (Christian Ulmen) a chubby good for nothing who is happy with just existing. A child is born, their marriage gets into trouble, they drift apart, will their love prevail ... ? But this movie is not that profane, it's actually a fairy-tale. Some of the characters come straight from the fairy-tale world. There is the evil queen, her husband, the naive and childish king, and of course a Prince Charming. Otto has got two fishes that are an enchanted human couple, and the viewer can hear them talk. They might be enchanted, but their dialogues are extremely profane, like from a cheap soap opera. So, strangely enough, all this fairy-tale elements are totally devoid of magic.

Mixing fairy-tale stereotypes with soap opera stereotypes doesn't turn it - by a coup de fée - into something brilliant and not boring. It would take some genuine movie magic to to this trick. Unfortunately Doris Dörrie is no disciple of this ancient knowledge, and no enchantress helped her to save this movie, that therefore stays on the narrow roads predetermined by it's shallow ingredients. This doesn't give the actors much of a chance to show their abilities. Christian Ulmen is capable of doing so much more than play somebody with a permanent constipation. Alexandra Maria Lara can be so much more than just being cute, but her cuteness is about the only thing this movie has still got, so there's no complaining here.

This is supposed to be a comedy, which is funny, because I didn't laugh but once, about the very inappropriate way, Ida was wearing the Japanese flag as a dress. Hint: The sun is shining out of her ...? Well, that's a faux pas, Mrs. Dörrie! This movie drags. It's got a very childish feel to it. It's not at all original, interesting or entertaining. There is no great acting. If this would be - as it looks like - the first work of a young director, nobody would encourage him to go on. But nothing could be farther from the truth: Doris Dörrie is one of the best known German movie directors, and perhaps the most prolific of them. More than 20 years ago, in 1988, she already made her Hollywood movie, about a guy who's penis is talking back to him (Me and Him). German movie critics and the guys & dolls in the German film financing system (Slogan: "Our stupid money is your business") do love her.

If you'll ever get the chance to see this movie - don't!

Shame the quality is not permanent

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 15 September 2017]

"Der Fischer und seine Frau" or "The Fisherman and His Wife" is a German film from 2005, so this one is already over a decade old and the writer and director here is Doris Dörrie, one of Germany's most famous (female) filmmakers. It runs for a bit under 100 minutes as a whole and features several names in the cast that German film buffs will immediately recognize, such as the two actors playing the title characters, Christian Ulmen and Alexandra Maria Lara. But also Elmar Wepper and Simon Verhoeven will be familiar, even if the latter now mostly because of his work behind the camera. As for Dörrie, her fascination with Asia goes decades back and here we have another piece of evidence, even if this one is more about the culture clash between Germans and Asian culture and also Germans clashing with each other and not really with Asians or even Asian culture. Actually, this one here is much more about expensive Asian fish than Asian humans. Nonetheless I believe that most of the focus here is on the couple mentioned in the title. Maybe you have heard about this title already in another context as it is also the name of a famous tale and Dörrie clearly turned this film into a modern version of said tale. The parallels are undeniable.

I would say that this was a good watch overall in the first half. It is subtle and quietly convincing and the only aspect I found annoying were honestly the talking fish (one of them Heiner Lauterbach who worked with Dörrie before of course) as they seemed way too gimmicky for my taste. But sadly after the fifty-minute mark, the film heads into a direction that just didn't work for me at all and this includes the win of this special competition, the cheating with the formerly best friend and eventually the explanation that she did what she did only because he never said those three magical words and he also accepts this explanation. Needless to say the talking fish parts were still bad, even if they were less frequent, which is really the only good thing about the second half. The final frog transformation was definitely nothing to be proud of and it adds more absurdity. Shame they did not manage to keep the level from the beginning and turned this into a loud and boastful movie that traded depth for make-believe. It stopped feeling realistic then really quickly. As for Dörrie's Asia centered works, it's definitely nowhere near the bad level of her recent Fukushima film, but it also is way way below the high quality of "Enlightenment guaranteed". The latter has Gustav Peter Wöhler in the lead and he plays a small role in this 2005 film too and he sure did a lot with the little material he had to work with. I would have loved to find out more about his character and life as actually this character also would have deserved his own film from what we find out about him here. Anyway, it would have moved the action too far away from Ulmen and Lara, so I guess I can see why they kept Wöhler's character's story minimal, even if I find it a pity. As for the entire film we have here, I have to give it a thumbs-down I guess. Had it not declined so rapidly, then my thumb would certainly show into the opposite direction as I enjoyed what I saw early on. As for the product, however, I suggest you skip it and watch something else instead.