The idea behind the movie wasn't too original. After their Mom died several years ago, the children try to get a new wife for their Dad. Has been done several times before. Nevertheless, it was quite a nice and decent movie. It could have easily gotten 9-10 points from me. But the ending leaves you deeply disappointed. SPOILERS: How does a workaholic, that's only after her career and has no use for children, change in the blink of an eye and suddenly want to life with 4 children? That's highly doubtful to me! She's the wrong girl and still gets the guy, while the other chick was perfect for him...and better looking too! Even my Mom hated that outcome!
2 Reviews
Not good, but could have been worse admittedly
Horst_In_Translation10 November 2020
Warning: Spoilers
"Vater braucht eine Frau", which means "Daddy needs a woman", is a German television film from 2002, so this one is almost 20 years old now, maybe over depending on when you read my review. Like the vast majority of small screen films here from my country this runs for shortly under 1.5 hours. The director is Matthias Tiefenbacher, who was already fairly experienced back then, but of course he also kept working steadily in the long time after this film. Sadly, most of the stuff he was in charge of turned out really weak. Poor quality galore in his body of work. The writers are Mattner and Studhalter, both also experienced, but not as much as the director. For Mattner it was already one of his later career efforts and he is retired now, if he is still alive. Has not worked on anything in over a decade, but started in the mid/late 1970s with writing screenplays. His body of work is also infinitely better than Studhalter's. The latter worked on "Unter Uns", "Alles was zählt", "Rote Rosen", "Verbotene Liebe" etc. Unreal stuff. Truly embarrassing. Actually taking this into account you can definitely say that the story here was better than expected. It was Studhalter's first writing credit by the way, so I suppose Mattner was the one in charge and kept it from becoming a massive failure. Another reason why I did not feel this sucked 100% was lead actor Lohmeyer. He is usually fairly solid and can even slightly elevate weak screenplays as we see here on some occasion. There are still some cringeworthy moments, but not as many as you could think and Lohmeyer may be one reason for that. It is not just him though. German film buffs will recognize other familiar faces such as Karven, Neu and Zirner. Also I see this film is closely connected to similar material from a long time ago. For example there is a movie that got made exactly 50 years before this one and the story is very similar. We also have a father in charge of several children and they are looking for a woman for him. Back then they used the paper, in the digitalized world they use the internet. I have not seen the aforementioned older movie, but there seem to be other connections to. And even the differences are somewhat not too different. Like I think the love interest is a model in the old film and here she is a photographer, but one of the kids thinks she is a model when they meet her for the first time. Maybe I should watch the old film.
But back to this one now. I think one reason why I did not hate it totally was that it was not too easy to predict. I mean I always thought there could be an option that Neu would end up being his partner when the closing credits roll in. Now I know it is a bit absurd probably because Lohmeyer's character clearly had the hots for Karven's and also the pseudo drama with the two not getting together and the shamefully exaggerated jealousy scene with the other guy (maybe the film's most terrible moment) made it obvious that in the end the two lovebirds would find a way. It's always like that when they seem to be never ever getting back together. To say it with Taylor. Another soemwhat weak inclusion was that for happy ending reasons, Imean 100% happy ending reasons, they just had Neu's character hook up with Zirner's. His body and colleague. That came out of nowhere and was not really needed. But I guess they wanted everybody to be happy and Neu's character was not depicted as an antagonist or anything, so she must find love as well. I think she was pretty attractive back then for sure. I mean Karven too, but my pick would have been Neu. Also maybe one reason why I thought Neu's character could be the one for him was that she seemed initially to be much more in favor of kids in contrast to Karven's. Although the scene when Karven is already annoyed by the sight of a mother with fairly wild offspring clearly felt really staged. Same for the business meeting scene and how Lohmeyer's character makes a statement that everybody admires him for as if he was some genius, but it was the most simple stuff really. Let me assure you they did not employ an economy expert to help them there with the script in terms of what the lead character says in this particular scene. And I say that as somebody with almost no connection with and interest in economy. Okay, that is pretty much it then I suppose. No need to really stretch it. Oh yeah, one final connection back to the beginning of my review. The housekeeper references is also included in the old movie and that is what Neu's character initially signed up for. More parallels. Not a coincidence. I still hope the film from the early 1950s is better than this one here because even with no obvious Degeto or Ziegler "contributions" as production companies, there was never really a moment where I was not 100% sure I'd give this one a thumbs-down. Here goes. Not recommended. Too little creativity and attention to detail overall. Still somewhat better than most other ARD (and their smaller stations') small screen releases. Watch something else instead.
But back to this one now. I think one reason why I did not hate it totally was that it was not too easy to predict. I mean I always thought there could be an option that Neu would end up being his partner when the closing credits roll in. Now I know it is a bit absurd probably because Lohmeyer's character clearly had the hots for Karven's and also the pseudo drama with the two not getting together and the shamefully exaggerated jealousy scene with the other guy (maybe the film's most terrible moment) made it obvious that in the end the two lovebirds would find a way. It's always like that when they seem to be never ever getting back together. To say it with Taylor. Another soemwhat weak inclusion was that for happy ending reasons, Imean 100% happy ending reasons, they just had Neu's character hook up with Zirner's. His body and colleague. That came out of nowhere and was not really needed. But I guess they wanted everybody to be happy and Neu's character was not depicted as an antagonist or anything, so she must find love as well. I think she was pretty attractive back then for sure. I mean Karven too, but my pick would have been Neu. Also maybe one reason why I thought Neu's character could be the one for him was that she seemed initially to be much more in favor of kids in contrast to Karven's. Although the scene when Karven is already annoyed by the sight of a mother with fairly wild offspring clearly felt really staged. Same for the business meeting scene and how Lohmeyer's character makes a statement that everybody admires him for as if he was some genius, but it was the most simple stuff really. Let me assure you they did not employ an economy expert to help them there with the script in terms of what the lead character says in this particular scene. And I say that as somebody with almost no connection with and interest in economy. Okay, that is pretty much it then I suppose. No need to really stretch it. Oh yeah, one final connection back to the beginning of my review. The housekeeper references is also included in the old movie and that is what Neu's character initially signed up for. More parallels. Not a coincidence. I still hope the film from the early 1950s is better than this one here because even with no obvious Degeto or Ziegler "contributions" as production companies, there was never really a moment where I was not 100% sure I'd give this one a thumbs-down. Here goes. Not recommended. Too little creativity and attention to detail overall. Still somewhat better than most other ARD (and their smaller stations') small screen releases. Watch something else instead.
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