Why am I saying that?
Well, a few days ago an old friend called. He’s currently working in Germany and despite how close we were before, now we rarely find time to chat. Anyways, he called and we talked for a couple of hours. We touched a lot of subjects including the crisis in Ukraine, the Champions league final, etc. We also talked about movies. I said that I was waiting for Godzilla and currently I don’t have anything interesting to watch. That’s when he suggested a movie called F*uck you, Goethe or as it’s called in Germany Fack ju Gohte.This may sound a bit childish-like, but I was actually intrigued by the name. And yes, if you choose your movies only by name, you will often be disappointed. But my friend said he liked it a lot and that it’s a good movie for an evening at home.
Anyway, I decided to look up the movie myself and see whether it’s worth my time. I started with actors, director, trailer and recognitions.
As I don’t know any of the actors or the director Bora Dagtekin, I didn’t concentrate on people in the movie too much. Then I decided to watch a trailer of this movie. Unfortunately, all the trailers I could find were in German so I didn’t even understand what they were talking about.
Watching the trailer didn’t really help either. Apparently, there is a guy that gets out of jail and for some reason comes to work at a school. As one can expect, he gets a terrible class of students where no one is even thinking of learning. Something similar to Kindergarten Cop with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Only with older kids.
I also like to check has the movie got any awards. And this is where it got interesting. The movie visited lots of film festivals and got two awards and five nominations. Both wins are Audience Awards in German Film Awards (Highest grossing film of the year) and Bavarian Film Awards. Also I’ve found that F*uck you, Goethe was last year’s most successful movie in Germany raking over $60 million since it was launched on November 7, 2013. Keep in mind that the budget for the movie was “only” €5 million.
I’ll admit. The movie didn’t leave much of an impression at first. But , I decided to watch it. And I have to say, I liked it.
It’s not like it’s a nominee for the next year’s Oscars but the movie was pretty entertaining.
I don’t want to spoil too much so I’ll just say that the ex-prisoner Zeki Müller (Elyas M’Barek) comes to work at a school as it’s built where he hid the money he had stolen (he could have easily won them at some casino playing slots or blackjack) before he went to prison.
There are things in life that I wait for more but I even got excited when I heard that they are making a sequel - F*uck you, Goethe 2 that is due to September, 2015. However, I know that it’s very common for movie sequels s to be worse than the originals. So, I’m not expecting a lot from it but given a chance, I think I will gladly give it a shot.
All in all, if you like a good comedy, consider this a possibility. Not a must, but definitely a possibility. You’ll spend two hours launching out loud. It’s unlikely that it will the best movie you’ve seen all year, maybe even that month. But it has lots of entertainment value, some good humor and may perfectly fit for an evening with friends and maybe some German beer.
