This film starts as a promising satire and good comedy, but by the time its first 30 minutes go by, one gets a deeply embarrassed feeling from the naive acting of almost all main protagonists, and, which is worse, from the director's ubiquitous message that capitalism is all bad and socialism/communism was all good. The ending is so pathetic that I first thought the director just wanted to make fun of the audience, but considering he is now 47 years old, it just might be that he truly and deeply believes in what his film is saying... It actually feels as if the director was some king of 70+ pensioner (no offense intended) utterly unable to cope with the fact that the world has changed, thus unable to see his own mistake.
It is a real shame, since the idea and the topic, although not original at all (Goodbye Lenin), offers a plethora of situations and characters through which a filmmaker can reflect on the transformation of a socialist/communist society into a 'modern' one with free trade and capitalism in general... This movie is especially annoying to anyone who has lived during the previous oppressive regime, since its entire 92 minutes portray modern-world capitalism as nothing but rotten, while the hardships of socialist/communist era are presented with pathetic nostalgia as being incomparably better to what has come after them... After the final scene, I realised I never laughed during the entire film, even though the director clearly wanted me to... The complete lack of any traces of a realistic view of modern society makes this film a true waste of money – both on the part of audience, as well as its produces.
It is a real shame, since the idea and the topic, although not original at all (Goodbye Lenin), offers a plethora of situations and characters through which a filmmaker can reflect on the transformation of a socialist/communist society into a 'modern' one with free trade and capitalism in general... This movie is especially annoying to anyone who has lived during the previous oppressive regime, since its entire 92 minutes portray modern-world capitalism as nothing but rotten, while the hardships of socialist/communist era are presented with pathetic nostalgia as being incomparably better to what has come after them... After the final scene, I realised I never laughed during the entire film, even though the director clearly wanted me to... The complete lack of any traces of a realistic view of modern society makes this film a true waste of money – both on the part of audience, as well as its produces.