"Alles ist Liebe" is a German 2-hour mix between romance and comedy from two years ago. The director is Markus Goller who has been active in German comedy filmmaking for quite a while now. The writer is Jane Ainscough and, even if you won't guess it from her name, she also wrote a handful fairly famous German comedies in the last couple years. Here her work is based on the screenplay by Kim van Kooten as this movie is the remake of a really successful dutch movie from 2007. And speaking about foreign movies, you know that the likes of Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter etc. have recently been used by American filmmakers to depict the lives of several normal people (played by famous actors) and how they struggle with their lives while looking for happiness, usually in terms of love. And this description also fits very well when it comes to this movie. It was a pretty huge project looking at how people like Ulmen, Tschirner, Makatsch, Schüttler and Möhring are on board and they can certainly be considered among Germany's acting elite from their respective age groups and they get/got cast a lot in prestigious projects over the years.
But known names are not a guarantee for a strong movie sadly. Several of the stories do not feel that great or realistic or convincing. This refers to the homosexual story line for example, including the typical garbage story of one person leaving the other in the church at the day of their wedding when they were supposed to swear eternal trust and faithfulness to one another. And if this isn't bad enough already, then the one guy also happens to randomly kiss a female moments later and yet of course we are supposed to believe the reason is the relationship to his father and they do belong together of course. Oh well, it's touch to appreciate a film with stuff like this. Besides that, the film also has more than just a few moments of cringeworthy schmaltzy scenes and relationship drama that does not feel half as authentic as it should. And the consequence is that especially the more serious moments hurt the viewing experience, these moments where the film takes itself much more seriously than it has any right to.
On a more positive note, Nora Tschirner is as adorable and sweet as always. It sucks though that we have to cheer for her getting together with Tom Beck's character and I never liked him as an actor. Besides that, the film is so incredibly predictable that it's not fun to watch because you are just never surprised at all. In general, I don't mind predictability as long as the road to the predictable ending is at least creative or feels real and authentic, but this is not true for any of the story lines in here. There are several cringeworthy moments in terms of dialogues too, but honestly this is almost guaranteed for the genre, but it still makes me sad. So yeah, as you already know by now, for me the negative easily outweighs the positive and I just cannot give it a thumbs-up. This is disappointing as judging from the cast, there was a lot more potential for this film here and it could have been a good watch with a better script. Now I just wonder if the original Dutch movie is as weak. Oh well, my review should be for the German film though and I don't recommend checking out these 120 minutes. Watch something else instead.
But known names are not a guarantee for a strong movie sadly. Several of the stories do not feel that great or realistic or convincing. This refers to the homosexual story line for example, including the typical garbage story of one person leaving the other in the church at the day of their wedding when they were supposed to swear eternal trust and faithfulness to one another. And if this isn't bad enough already, then the one guy also happens to randomly kiss a female moments later and yet of course we are supposed to believe the reason is the relationship to his father and they do belong together of course. Oh well, it's touch to appreciate a film with stuff like this. Besides that, the film also has more than just a few moments of cringeworthy schmaltzy scenes and relationship drama that does not feel half as authentic as it should. And the consequence is that especially the more serious moments hurt the viewing experience, these moments where the film takes itself much more seriously than it has any right to.
On a more positive note, Nora Tschirner is as adorable and sweet as always. It sucks though that we have to cheer for her getting together with Tom Beck's character and I never liked him as an actor. Besides that, the film is so incredibly predictable that it's not fun to watch because you are just never surprised at all. In general, I don't mind predictability as long as the road to the predictable ending is at least creative or feels real and authentic, but this is not true for any of the story lines in here. There are several cringeworthy moments in terms of dialogues too, but honestly this is almost guaranteed for the genre, but it still makes me sad. So yeah, as you already know by now, for me the negative easily outweighs the positive and I just cannot give it a thumbs-up. This is disappointing as judging from the cast, there was a lot more potential for this film here and it could have been a good watch with a better script. Now I just wonder if the original Dutch movie is as weak. Oh well, my review should be for the German film though and I don't recommend checking out these 120 minutes. Watch something else instead.
