"Papa hat keinen Plan" is a German television film from 2019, so this one is still relatively recent because there's still 2.5 months to go right now until iit has its second anniversary only. The title means "Daddy doesn't have a plan" and the man you see on the poster here is the one who fits the description Very random title though overall. The working title was the pretty confusing "Wenn nicht, dann jetzt" (If not, then now) and I am not sure whoch of the two is worse. Both suck for different reasons. The director here of these 1.5 hours is a very experienced Austrian filmmaker from Vienna and the name is Matthias Steurer. I like Austrian films, some of them a lot really, but if I take a look at Steurer's body of work, a lot of it is just unwatchable to be honest. I cannot say too much about what he did early on, but almost everything from the 20th century looks to me as if it is completely quantity over quality. The ambition to come up with a creative achievement was buried a long time ago. Instead, he dishes out one forgettable of even terrible ARD (movie) after the next. Here we got one example. The writer is Marek Helsner who also started writing early in the the 20th century, so had been in the industry for over 15 years when he was in charge of penning this one here. The outcome is not what you would expect from an experienced writer, but then seeing how he was a part of stuff like Küstenwache or SOKO (even worse), you cannot have any high expectatios here. Even low expectations will be disappointed for the most part I guess. This film is based on a book by the way and foe Edgar Rai, the original writer, it is apparently the first work that got turned into a movie. I wonder how he thinks about the outcome here. I hope he is not happy with it, otherwise I would really question his artistic integrity or if his work means anything to him. Haven't read the book though, so I cannot talk about parallels and differences between the base material and this movie adaptation.
As for the cast, there are a handful actors in here that have been part of many (television) movies and artistic quality is something you will not find in many of those. So yeah, this project was doomed from the start. I don't want to start with the lead actor you see on the poster here, but instead mention Johanna-Christine Gehlen, who plays his girlfriend at the beginning of the movie. Now she is really an actress that I have seen in some stuff and is honestly unbearably bad most of the time. I see no talent in her whatsoever. This may sound harsh, but it is true. She does not have a lot of screen time here, is basically only briefly in it at the very start and near the end, but not at the end, but this is enough for her to leave a negative mark already. And she has been a lead in several projects I have seen. Unacceptable. The other female grown-up actress here, Clelia Sarto, I cannot say anything about almost. She is German despite the name, but kinda fitting here because the movie is mostly set in Italy. I think she has been in series most of the time and with the movies she was in, even if some of them are famous, her roles very extremely small. Tim Bergmann plays the latter's character's partner and well, he is one who has always been more about looks than talent. There is no talent with him. The good thing is that he rarely goes over the top. He may not even nail the characters one but, but at least he does not seem too try-hard most of the time. Bianca Nawrath has Polish roots in reality, but in this movie here she has an Italian mother. She is a little stunner, not gonna lie, but this does not mean she was good, let alone great, in here either. Very forgettable if we ignore her physicality, even if you have to say in her favor that the character was written so poorly that probably nobody could have made it work. Then again, she always could have rejected the role, so no mercy on her either. Thumbs-down instead.
The man you see on the poster is Lucas Gregorowicz and he plays the character at the center of the story that is the link between everybody else. He is also fairly famous here in Germany thanks to Lammbock, the sequel Lommbock and many other projects that have seen by an above-average amount of people. He has also been in theatrical releases many times, not something most cast members here can say about themselves. He worked with Fatih Akin for example. But these successes do not mean he does not show up here and there on small screen releases either. He does. Then again, "successes" is relative here I would say because it is very telling that, despite all the stuff, he has been in he does not have a single awards nomination apparently. At least according to his imdb profile page. And I find that very accurate because I think he is a very limited actor, so he fits in nicely with everybody else (also the crew, most of all the crew and writer) with this movie here. Lead actor material he never was, never will be, but maybe it works a bit in his favor that he seems to become more handsome with age. He does not look bad here. And I remember this differently from other films where he frequently came off as a bit of a nerd, not always intentional. As for the movie, it is nothing unusual that there are frequently anti-male tendencies in these films and the title here never would have sounded like that if it was about a woman. Or at least there it would have been way more humorous than it is with this film here, especially because the title is so vague that it barely makes sense and if the working title was maybe the title of the book and also an option for the movie, then the choice here is even more despicable, especially because the director and writer are males as well. "Males" maybe.
As for the story, there are so many examples during which this wasn't even a remotel good watch. It was also downright absurd on many occasions. The big moments and the small moments. Take Gehlen's character and her initiative in terms of apartments and pregnancy wishes early on. She only got away with that because she does not look like 50 which she almost was when this got made. Or take the scene in which she randomly shows up there in Italy with everybody else out of nowhere. Gregorowicz was lucky he is the protagonist here because normally men who decline women's wishes to settle down and turn into a family are severe antagonists and also no man would get away relatively unharmed with what Gehlen's character called the teenager in this film. There are the next struggles. Take the moment in which daddy randomly finds her making out with an Italian guy as they were hiding. Must be a really small place. Or the idea that she is so mad about a boy from her school or something making out with another girl that she wants revenge. Again, this is where the anti-male agendy fully strikes. Men would not be allowed to do stuff like that. If women do it, it is all evens basically. It already started pretty weak with how Nawrath's character is checked out by a police officer or something when they are stopped there. Pretty cringeworthy. Not funny, not meaningul and absolutely uninspired. Then there is the protagonist's music background. This was elabrated on early in the film a bit and then forgotten completely. But I guess it is alright. Had they pursued this idea of how it could have been his dream to achieve what the girl's mother achieved, then it would have just turned into another pseudo important sub-plot. How he does not pay his bills is embarrassing enough already early on. There are many other pretty bad moments here, like also how the protagonist (daddy) makes out with another female character on one occasion.
One of the weakest moments, however, was all the drama at the end with the three getting together like a family again. Or almost like that. The woman's new guy watches and runs away as he apparently has the emotional stability of a teenager. The punch before that was bad enough already, but this really topped it all in the negative sense. And don't even get me started on the play on words ("Einar zuviel") before the punch and also on how the protagonist acts as if Einar had molested his daughter when all he did was touch her on the arm. This was so poor, also with how the two men bond immediately afterwards again. Or the moment when one offers the other the "du". Cannt translate it with "you". But I wanted to talk about the end. This was really almost unwatchable at times. I kinda saw it coming that all of a sudden the two parents would be an item already with the other lovers gone, but the way things actually turned out with the other guy's flight and how they get him back and everything was not any better at all. What was just as bad was the pseudo closure and happy ending for everybody there. They travel to Italy once a year for two weeks. The other two are happily together. Gehlen's character also found a guy and don't force me to say who it was according to the voiceover explanation. This was all so cringe really. I must still say that, as horrible as my review may sound, this was nowhere near the worst I have seen on Germany television lately, but this really only has to do with how bad the other projects were and not that this here is any good. The moments where I thought about giving this one 2 out of 5 instead of 2 out of 10 were relatively rare. The best example(s) of how this film sucks is everything that the main character takes to the head in terms of being knocked down. I know this was for comedic reasons and not seriously about drama or something and I guess they included it because it was also in the book, maybe a bit of a running gag, but is just not the slightest bit of entertaining. Lowest possible rating from me for the outcome here. Of course, I am biased with the actors, but this bias is on solid foundations because they really have shown that they are not talened on other films. Highly not recommended.
As for the cast, there are a handful actors in here that have been part of many (television) movies and artistic quality is something you will not find in many of those. So yeah, this project was doomed from the start. I don't want to start with the lead actor you see on the poster here, but instead mention Johanna-Christine Gehlen, who plays his girlfriend at the beginning of the movie. Now she is really an actress that I have seen in some stuff and is honestly unbearably bad most of the time. I see no talent in her whatsoever. This may sound harsh, but it is true. She does not have a lot of screen time here, is basically only briefly in it at the very start and near the end, but not at the end, but this is enough for her to leave a negative mark already. And she has been a lead in several projects I have seen. Unacceptable. The other female grown-up actress here, Clelia Sarto, I cannot say anything about almost. She is German despite the name, but kinda fitting here because the movie is mostly set in Italy. I think she has been in series most of the time and with the movies she was in, even if some of them are famous, her roles very extremely small. Tim Bergmann plays the latter's character's partner and well, he is one who has always been more about looks than talent. There is no talent with him. The good thing is that he rarely goes over the top. He may not even nail the characters one but, but at least he does not seem too try-hard most of the time. Bianca Nawrath has Polish roots in reality, but in this movie here she has an Italian mother. She is a little stunner, not gonna lie, but this does not mean she was good, let alone great, in here either. Very forgettable if we ignore her physicality, even if you have to say in her favor that the character was written so poorly that probably nobody could have made it work. Then again, she always could have rejected the role, so no mercy on her either. Thumbs-down instead.
The man you see on the poster is Lucas Gregorowicz and he plays the character at the center of the story that is the link between everybody else. He is also fairly famous here in Germany thanks to Lammbock, the sequel Lommbock and many other projects that have seen by an above-average amount of people. He has also been in theatrical releases many times, not something most cast members here can say about themselves. He worked with Fatih Akin for example. But these successes do not mean he does not show up here and there on small screen releases either. He does. Then again, "successes" is relative here I would say because it is very telling that, despite all the stuff, he has been in he does not have a single awards nomination apparently. At least according to his imdb profile page. And I find that very accurate because I think he is a very limited actor, so he fits in nicely with everybody else (also the crew, most of all the crew and writer) with this movie here. Lead actor material he never was, never will be, but maybe it works a bit in his favor that he seems to become more handsome with age. He does not look bad here. And I remember this differently from other films where he frequently came off as a bit of a nerd, not always intentional. As for the movie, it is nothing unusual that there are frequently anti-male tendencies in these films and the title here never would have sounded like that if it was about a woman. Or at least there it would have been way more humorous than it is with this film here, especially because the title is so vague that it barely makes sense and if the working title was maybe the title of the book and also an option for the movie, then the choice here is even more despicable, especially because the director and writer are males as well. "Males" maybe.
As for the story, there are so many examples during which this wasn't even a remotel good watch. It was also downright absurd on many occasions. The big moments and the small moments. Take Gehlen's character and her initiative in terms of apartments and pregnancy wishes early on. She only got away with that because she does not look like 50 which she almost was when this got made. Or take the scene in which she randomly shows up there in Italy with everybody else out of nowhere. Gregorowicz was lucky he is the protagonist here because normally men who decline women's wishes to settle down and turn into a family are severe antagonists and also no man would get away relatively unharmed with what Gehlen's character called the teenager in this film. There are the next struggles. Take the moment in which daddy randomly finds her making out with an Italian guy as they were hiding. Must be a really small place. Or the idea that she is so mad about a boy from her school or something making out with another girl that she wants revenge. Again, this is where the anti-male agendy fully strikes. Men would not be allowed to do stuff like that. If women do it, it is all evens basically. It already started pretty weak with how Nawrath's character is checked out by a police officer or something when they are stopped there. Pretty cringeworthy. Not funny, not meaningul and absolutely uninspired. Then there is the protagonist's music background. This was elabrated on early in the film a bit and then forgotten completely. But I guess it is alright. Had they pursued this idea of how it could have been his dream to achieve what the girl's mother achieved, then it would have just turned into another pseudo important sub-plot. How he does not pay his bills is embarrassing enough already early on. There are many other pretty bad moments here, like also how the protagonist (daddy) makes out with another female character on one occasion.
One of the weakest moments, however, was all the drama at the end with the three getting together like a family again. Or almost like that. The woman's new guy watches and runs away as he apparently has the emotional stability of a teenager. The punch before that was bad enough already, but this really topped it all in the negative sense. And don't even get me started on the play on words ("Einar zuviel") before the punch and also on how the protagonist acts as if Einar had molested his daughter when all he did was touch her on the arm. This was so poor, also with how the two men bond immediately afterwards again. Or the moment when one offers the other the "du". Cannt translate it with "you". But I wanted to talk about the end. This was really almost unwatchable at times. I kinda saw it coming that all of a sudden the two parents would be an item already with the other lovers gone, but the way things actually turned out with the other guy's flight and how they get him back and everything was not any better at all. What was just as bad was the pseudo closure and happy ending for everybody there. They travel to Italy once a year for two weeks. The other two are happily together. Gehlen's character also found a guy and don't force me to say who it was according to the voiceover explanation. This was all so cringe really. I must still say that, as horrible as my review may sound, this was nowhere near the worst I have seen on Germany television lately, but this really only has to do with how bad the other projects were and not that this here is any good. The moments where I thought about giving this one 2 out of 5 instead of 2 out of 10 were relatively rare. The best example(s) of how this film sucks is everything that the main character takes to the head in terms of being knocked down. I know this was for comedic reasons and not seriously about drama or something and I guess they included it because it was also in the book, maybe a bit of a running gag, but is just not the slightest bit of entertaining. Lowest possible rating from me for the outcome here. Of course, I am biased with the actors, but this bias is on solid foundations because they really have shown that they are not talened on other films. Highly not recommended.
