KinoKritiker Reviews

French for Beginners (2006)

A delightful film for anyone who was a cross-cultural student in Europe

[8/10 · 7 April 2007]

This film should bring back memories to anyone who has studied abroad as a teenager in Europe, but particularly in France or Germany. The Citroen 2CVs will certainly bring back memories to older viewers! It is indeed a charming first love / romantic comedy / coming-of-age story, and the actors and actresses play their roles beautifully. It is so refreshing to see a "teenage" comedy that is not totally inane. It plays tastefully upon all the usual clichés and stereotypes about French vs German culture.

It can, of course, also be used in German, French, and even EFL language classes (the DVD has both German and English subtitles) as a means to discuss cultural differences, prejudices, and stereotypes (in addition to learning German or English). The perhaps over-emphasis on teenage sexuality in some scenes will make it probably unsuitable for most high school use outside of Europe, but it is certainly suitable for college use in discussing cultural differences.

Pirates of Treasure Island (2006)

It's A Spoof

[7/10 · 18 September 2006]

It's a reasonably good low budget spoof, but it's not Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein. Don't expect a major studio production, and you may even enjoy the film. I had hoped that the bug on the island was somehow a recondite allusion to Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold Bug (which strongly influenced Stevenson's writing of Treasure Island), but, alas, that was probably too much to hope for. The humor is sometimes subtle (when it's not intentionally and blatantly absurd), and you will need also to listen carefully to catch most of it. Sometimes the humor is a little disappointing; with all of the luscious décolletage, the best line they could come up with was the "udder pain" one. So the humor isn't always National Lampoon, but it's still not a bad spoof.