"Besser Spät als Nie", which means "Better late than never" and kinda fits the movie content-wise (which is the only good thing I can say about it), is a German television film from 2015, so none months ago this one had its fifth anniversary. It's another production by the infamous ARD Degeto supported by Theaterkunst GmbH and this runs for slightly under 1.5 hours. The director is Christoph Schnee who launched his career back at the very end of the old millennium and most of what he did in the first decade of his career, maybe 15 years even, was certainly still better than most of the stuff he did later. This film here has to be the very worst though from his filmography and she should not think all he did was that bad, even if his career is nothing to be jealous of either. Not at all. The writer is Stefan Kuhlmann and he was 50 back then and is now a little older obviously. Seeing his "achievements", I would say they are even worse quality-wise if we compare all he did to the director's body of work. As for Kuhlmann, it's mostly series anyway, but on the rare occasion that he came up with a movie, it all went wrong like it did here and I think with most of the stuff in here, the writer is definitely way more to blame then the director. Not too much to say about the cast here: Nele Mueller-Stöfen proves 100% she is not lead actress material, actually no actress material at all. Jochen Horst I remember from the RTL action series Balko (similar to Cobra 11, just fewer cars) and if you thought that was bad, wait till you see his movie here. Helen Woigk is really attractive and still acting nowadays, but her most known work will probably always be "Das Leben ist nichts für Feiglinge". There are more faily experienced cast members in here, such as Marischka, but I won#t elaborate on those. Go check out their bodies of work if you care.
Normally I use two paragraphs for the basics, but this film here is so utterly unwatchable that I want to use four paragraphs to elaborate on all that is wrong with it. It is probablly the worst movie I have seen in 2021 so far. Almost every scene is on failure territory here. This is a lot "thanks" to the aforementioned Mueller-Stofen, who has so many bad moments. I will just mention one really brief moment, namely how she reacts when she hears her daughter is pregnant. Cringe is real. Another moment would be when she is physically attracted really (and shows us) after her man wins this football game against the young fella. Speaking of these football games, the moments when they were cheering later on when they made it a family affair were also pretty embarrassing and fake. Especially with the two females there. But let's go to the very start. Here we have a woman over the age of 40 who decides she will continue her medicine studies after many, many years. Her husband is not too happy and how he reacts to the situation and how he treats her disrespectfully, also carries her away is really a prime example of Degeto's usual anti-male propaganda. Many more examples there. The best (or worst, actually) example would be the tear-filled meltdown from the protagonist's best friend because her man left her for a much younger woman. The insults dished out during the two women's walk there are nothing I can quote here because my review won't get accepted. Even more pathetic that a guy wrote them as he wrote the entire script. Normally I say two writers in these films is not a good idea either because they bring out the worst in each other, but here I doubt another writer could have made things even worse. We are basically at the South Pole already quality-wise. Also, with this scene, pay attention to how the best friend is not hesitant to drool over other guys' physicality immediately afterwards. Now that is not shallow right. I almost smiled a bit when said best friend had a car accident under the influence towards the end, another entirely pseudo-dramatic inclusion that was forgotten about seconds later of course. Oh and pay attention to how Horst's character hangs out with the guy who cheated on the woman I just talked about. Men are all the same! How can he still be friends with him???
As we go on with the glorious premise here, what happens when the female protagonist enters the auditorium? Of course, she is later, but we ignore that because she is so cute struggling to carry all these books before that. And the professor asks her some super complicated stuff right away and we see another student sitting there has no clue, but our wonderful lead gets out the almost correct answer immediately. This was so cringeworthy to watch. The mess continues because we find out that the protagonists' daughter is in a romantic relationship with said professor. Of course they are. As if it wasn't absurd already that mother and daughter are in the same lecture there. And all this after they tell us that many people with a perfect average are not even allowed to study medicine. Our charming heroines are though. The autopsy scenes deserve to be mentioned too when the characters work on actual corpses. Of course, the male student there has to throw up immediately and the daughter does not. But she is fairly clueless when it comes to the professor's questions, but mother knows it all once again obviously. Without a doubt, she also knows the answers at the exam at the end, but just sits there and her mind is elsewhere and off she runs to fix things with her man. Sure thing. Cannot wait until after the test. Kinda shocking anyway that all of a sudden she cares. I mean she cheated on her man, which is of course not despicable compared to when it happens the other way around with the best friend. Of course, the fella she had sex with was another student who was at least 15 years younger. This woman can have them all! Unreal. But she does not really want to. The knowledge how hot she still is (nah!) she takes though I guess. When we saw her dance there at the club with all the young folks and young men expressing interest was absolutely hilarious too. Her daughter was also around of course. Oh yes, said daughter is also pregnant of course from her professor. Is that even legal? I mean the entire relationship. Again, unreal. And in the end, we see she has the child and mother has her degree and everybody's happy. Right after some pseudo drama where the daughter buried her dream and embarrassing "mother uses daughter to fulfill her own dreams" blah blah.
Horst's character was also provided with many terrible moments through the script. His reaction to the pregnancy. How he arrogantly asks her if she is fine on one occasion when doing some work while her man and guests sit at a table. The idea of how he uses this little robot to clean the apartment. Or how he actually took care of something towards the end. Or how he knows about his son's drug abuse. Or how he reacts after his strong and powerful wife decides to leave and join the university despite his criticisms. Or take the punch at the club after the young guy's nasty comment. Take what happens when he shows up at the site where they are surfing. How he sits there to imply he cares for his woman. The latter is of course busy doing a certain sport where you could see that the actress never did that before in her life. Also her quick mean comment about the car was ridiculously embarrassing. One second is enough to provide gigantic cringe. She did not know back then her man was inside. And also some other student who seems to have a soft spot for identical twins, but the scene with this guy towards the end when he eats a bowl of vegetables is even more embarrassing. This is not what vegans do! Or the early scene when the fat student repairs something. God, this film is so stupid. Many other moments, also small moments. Like take the scene in which the father shows up at the dorm and from all the people living there, of course his daughter also shows up the exact same time to let him in. Coincidence is real. Or speaking of daddy already, back to the camping scenario how he talks there in an artificial manner about his feelings about the whole situation. The woman is the cheater, but they did all they could to make him seem as fake and unlikable as it gets. Horst also really did his best (i.e. worst there) to "make it work".
Oh and I shall not forget the music in here. They used so many songs here, some popular. Even some okay songs that feel really clumsy now used together with some of the scenes in here. Take Nelly Furtado's Forca or Fatboy Slim's Praise You at the vere end. Way to ruin a song and especially the latter is very good I think. I wish one of the producers would see this travesty of a film here and sue the makers and make sure it may never be shown again. But then, they would probably simply remove the song and still show it. No shame these Degeto people have. That much is safe. But something needs to be done. This is the stuff that gets made thanks to money that is literally blackmailed from the German population (GEZ money), i.e. the people have to pay for this nonsense and then they are exposed to the outcome to get even more stupid. Unreal. It's time to stand up, especially because this movie is probably still going to be shown for at least another decade on national television. No words for that. I think it was an absolutely abysmal watch and the character limit could be 20k instead of 10k and still I would not get in hald of everything that is wrong with this film. It's also the small moments, not just the key elements and characters. No mercy for the actors either. It may be true that not even the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis could have made this film work with how much of an atrocuíty the screenplay is, but nobody forced these actors to accept. If i already see NMS on the poster here, standing there with all her grace and dignity as if this was something like an insightful character study. It's utter nonsense. Highly not recommended.
Normally I use two paragraphs for the basics, but this film here is so utterly unwatchable that I want to use four paragraphs to elaborate on all that is wrong with it. It is probablly the worst movie I have seen in 2021 so far. Almost every scene is on failure territory here. This is a lot "thanks" to the aforementioned Mueller-Stofen, who has so many bad moments. I will just mention one really brief moment, namely how she reacts when she hears her daughter is pregnant. Cringe is real. Another moment would be when she is physically attracted really (and shows us) after her man wins this football game against the young fella. Speaking of these football games, the moments when they were cheering later on when they made it a family affair were also pretty embarrassing and fake. Especially with the two females there. But let's go to the very start. Here we have a woman over the age of 40 who decides she will continue her medicine studies after many, many years. Her husband is not too happy and how he reacts to the situation and how he treats her disrespectfully, also carries her away is really a prime example of Degeto's usual anti-male propaganda. Many more examples there. The best (or worst, actually) example would be the tear-filled meltdown from the protagonist's best friend because her man left her for a much younger woman. The insults dished out during the two women's walk there are nothing I can quote here because my review won't get accepted. Even more pathetic that a guy wrote them as he wrote the entire script. Normally I say two writers in these films is not a good idea either because they bring out the worst in each other, but here I doubt another writer could have made things even worse. We are basically at the South Pole already quality-wise. Also, with this scene, pay attention to how the best friend is not hesitant to drool over other guys' physicality immediately afterwards. Now that is not shallow right. I almost smiled a bit when said best friend had a car accident under the influence towards the end, another entirely pseudo-dramatic inclusion that was forgotten about seconds later of course. Oh and pay attention to how Horst's character hangs out with the guy who cheated on the woman I just talked about. Men are all the same! How can he still be friends with him???
As we go on with the glorious premise here, what happens when the female protagonist enters the auditorium? Of course, she is later, but we ignore that because she is so cute struggling to carry all these books before that. And the professor asks her some super complicated stuff right away and we see another student sitting there has no clue, but our wonderful lead gets out the almost correct answer immediately. This was so cringeworthy to watch. The mess continues because we find out that the protagonists' daughter is in a romantic relationship with said professor. Of course they are. As if it wasn't absurd already that mother and daughter are in the same lecture there. And all this after they tell us that many people with a perfect average are not even allowed to study medicine. Our charming heroines are though. The autopsy scenes deserve to be mentioned too when the characters work on actual corpses. Of course, the male student there has to throw up immediately and the daughter does not. But she is fairly clueless when it comes to the professor's questions, but mother knows it all once again obviously. Without a doubt, she also knows the answers at the exam at the end, but just sits there and her mind is elsewhere and off she runs to fix things with her man. Sure thing. Cannot wait until after the test. Kinda shocking anyway that all of a sudden she cares. I mean she cheated on her man, which is of course not despicable compared to when it happens the other way around with the best friend. Of course, the fella she had sex with was another student who was at least 15 years younger. This woman can have them all! Unreal. But she does not really want to. The knowledge how hot she still is (nah!) she takes though I guess. When we saw her dance there at the club with all the young folks and young men expressing interest was absolutely hilarious too. Her daughter was also around of course. Oh yes, said daughter is also pregnant of course from her professor. Is that even legal? I mean the entire relationship. Again, unreal. And in the end, we see she has the child and mother has her degree and everybody's happy. Right after some pseudo drama where the daughter buried her dream and embarrassing "mother uses daughter to fulfill her own dreams" blah blah.
Horst's character was also provided with many terrible moments through the script. His reaction to the pregnancy. How he arrogantly asks her if she is fine on one occasion when doing some work while her man and guests sit at a table. The idea of how he uses this little robot to clean the apartment. Or how he actually took care of something towards the end. Or how he knows about his son's drug abuse. Or how he reacts after his strong and powerful wife decides to leave and join the university despite his criticisms. Or take the punch at the club after the young guy's nasty comment. Take what happens when he shows up at the site where they are surfing. How he sits there to imply he cares for his woman. The latter is of course busy doing a certain sport where you could see that the actress never did that before in her life. Also her quick mean comment about the car was ridiculously embarrassing. One second is enough to provide gigantic cringe. She did not know back then her man was inside. And also some other student who seems to have a soft spot for identical twins, but the scene with this guy towards the end when he eats a bowl of vegetables is even more embarrassing. This is not what vegans do! Or the early scene when the fat student repairs something. God, this film is so stupid. Many other moments, also small moments. Like take the scene in which the father shows up at the dorm and from all the people living there, of course his daughter also shows up the exact same time to let him in. Coincidence is real. Or speaking of daddy already, back to the camping scenario how he talks there in an artificial manner about his feelings about the whole situation. The woman is the cheater, but they did all they could to make him seem as fake and unlikable as it gets. Horst also really did his best (i.e. worst there) to "make it work".
Oh and I shall not forget the music in here. They used so many songs here, some popular. Even some okay songs that feel really clumsy now used together with some of the scenes in here. Take Nelly Furtado's Forca or Fatboy Slim's Praise You at the vere end. Way to ruin a song and especially the latter is very good I think. I wish one of the producers would see this travesty of a film here and sue the makers and make sure it may never be shown again. But then, they would probably simply remove the song and still show it. No shame these Degeto people have. That much is safe. But something needs to be done. This is the stuff that gets made thanks to money that is literally blackmailed from the German population (GEZ money), i.e. the people have to pay for this nonsense and then they are exposed to the outcome to get even more stupid. Unreal. It's time to stand up, especially because this movie is probably still going to be shown for at least another decade on national television. No words for that. I think it was an absolutely abysmal watch and the character limit could be 20k instead of 10k and still I would not get in hald of everything that is wrong with this film. It's also the small moments, not just the key elements and characters. No mercy for the actors either. It may be true that not even the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis could have made this film work with how much of an atrocuíty the screenplay is, but nobody forced these actors to accept. If i already see NMS on the poster here, standing there with all her grace and dignity as if this was something like an insightful character study. It's utter nonsense. Highly not recommended.
