I was quite eagerly expecting this movie, it's Netflix' first German movie (i.e. produced by Netflix, not bought). Directed and written by Oliver Kienle, one of the writers of "Bad Banks" (German television's excellent drama series on the banking crisis), it sounded quite promising.
The story draws its tension from two German neighbouring cities--Heidelberg and Mannheim. While Heidelberg is nice and mostly middle class, Mannheim is a blue collar city. Isi is a girl from Heidelberg, having incredible wealthy parents, living in a castle. She graduated from High School (with the help of some bribery from her parents) and does not want to study economics (as her parents want her to do) but rather go to New York to become a chef. In order to force her parents letting her go abroad, she picks up a proletarian boy from neighbouring Mannheim--aspiring boxer Ossi--pretending him to be her boyfriend.
Well, if this premise sounds as if it doesn't make much sense or if you ask yourself who nowadays is living in a castle, those are the more credible parts of this movie. Every single person in this movie is heavily clichéd, the dialogues unnatural and the jokes lame.
Surprisingly, taking the director's background into account, the story is very poorly written. I did not care for any of the characters nor the love story (mild spoiler: yes, they do actually fall in love).
Overall, quite a disappointment.
Review of Isi & Ossi
