Abwärts

The plot: Four people are caught in an elevator. One is a business man, the annoying kind who is aggressive and complains about everything and everyone and is a walking-talking sample of distilled stress and hostility. Then there's his colleague, a woman who is much more pleasant in her character. A teenage rebel who just broke into a coke machine and by his mere presence drives the businessman mad, and an older guy who just stole 100,000DM make up the rest of the cast...

The movie is all about how they cope with their problem, as time goes on and on without any success in reaching the outside world, as the lights go out, and as the cables begin to snap one after the other....

And yet, it isn't too exciting. The characters are stereotypes. The story is stupid and unlikely (how could so many things go so wrong in just one elevator?). You don't like the characters very much, you just hate one of them. And all the twists and turns in the plot are not contributing to the excitement, they are just stupid excuses for filling yet another few minutes with dialogue as the screenwriters keep running out of inspiration and ink on a full-length movie set in an elevator.

Let's just hope "Phone Booth" will be a better effort...