Leander Haussmann is such a goof ball. Whatever he touches turns into a travesty. Don't get me wrong. I like a good laugh. Who doesn't? But when everything's just a joke, nothing is funny and plots fall apart. Without the bitter, the sweet ain't the sweet, as Cameron Crowe once put it. "Robert Zimmermann" is a shallow comedy set in a fabricated limbo land half-way between the present and the post-war past. Robert, a computer game designer with the looks and moves of a 15-year old kid, falls in love with his laundry lady, a single mom and some 40 years Robert's senior, baffling his girlfriend, his buddies, and his parents. But then, his father keeps a twenty-something mistress, his mother tests the waters of menopausal romance, and his lesbian sister is pregnant with her childhood sweetheart's offspring. The only good thing about this movie is Annika Kuhl. She plays Robert's sister Pia and the minute you see her, you believe her character has a life off the screen, perhaps even some sort of secret. By comparison, everyone else is just an extra. Think of Pia as this movie's Margot Tenenbaum. Incidentally, she is also the director's girlfriend. He obviously has better taste in women than he has in movies. Guest appearance by Art Garfunkel's son.
