"Tödliches Comeback" is a German television film from 2019, April 2019, so this one is still relatively recent you can say and it's approximately two more months until it will have its second anniversary. Like most other German small screen releases, this runs for 1.5 hours or minimally under, but you still should not be mistaking it for an ARD Degeto movie. It's better than most of those. The title is maybe not great because it tries to combine the crime aspect and the comedy/music aspect in a rather clumsy fashion I think. It means "deadly comeback" of course. The director is Hermine Huntgeburth here, very experienced filmmaker and her being a part of this project makes obvious that you do not have to expect true failure here, even if it's an ARD movie or is shown on ARD's smaller regional channels. Anyway, as for Huntgeburth, she launched her career in the late 1980s already with a short film that came out pretty briefly before the Fall of the Berlin Wall and a few years later, she moved on to directing full feature films. She quickly managed to get in high-profile actors (at least as of today) like Klaußner, Manzel, Auer (more than once), Thalbach and others and that is very respectable for a young(er) filmmaker. And all this was in the old millennium still. Götz George as well. She is not a filmmaker who regularly writes her own screenplays. She did it early on in her career here and there, but quickly stopped and only did it once more in the new millennium when it came to book adaptation. I would not say her body of work is brilliant, but it's alright. Could have been worse. For the script they got Einrauch and Kurzawa here. Both have known each other for a long time and already collaborated on their very first film in 1990. They also did their own stuff on many occasions. Which probably works in Einrauch's favor because Kurzawa's is sometimes really bad, especially everything he has worked on in the new millennium. Some downright terrible projects there and I have seen them. So you should not expect a great script here, but seems as it Einrauch turned it into something semi-decent here and there. Both have also worked with Huntgeburth for a long time. Her name would be cooles with a d as the fourth letter by the way. And she was over 60 already when she worked on this one here.
If you take a look the poster here on imdb, you see some of the key players, central actors. I am not sure if I like the design a lot, but it could be worse too I suppose. The fella on the right may be the closest to a central character here, but the most known is of course the fella on the left. And the inclusion of the woman up there is almost a bit embarrassing because they used a smaller format for her and also in the film her character was not written too well and frequently felt just for the sake of a pretty uninspired romance story. I will get to that later. By the way, looking at the guy on the right, you could this is a GDR film, but no, he plays the role of a police officer, who wants to be transferred to the homicide department where a better job and salary would be waiting for him. The actor there is Ben Münchow, definitely not a big name and what I saw here from him certainly did not get me particularly curious. I still checked and see he's not a rookie but the rather small parts in not very inspired projects really make me question the decision to pick him as a lead here. In some scenes with Brambach, he felt clearly inferior in terms of range and the energy Brambach always brings to his roles. Brambach is of course the man you see on the left and he is one of my favorite German actors. Very experienced and very prolific performer. His likability surely helps him too. I am always glad to see him in movies and he almost always elevates the material, no matter if it's lighter stuff like here or more serious projects. I think he goes for the lighter stuff more often, but then again he was a murder suspect here at some point, so it is pretty serious, but never really felt that way. He was a scene stealer for me for sure. Elisa Schlott is the woman on the left and her I like physically a bit at least, which surprises me a bit because usually I am going for the darker type. Anyway, I still could have done without her character. Maybe the worst writing from the entire film. Jeanette Hain is a definite ccontender for that as well. Adds almost nothing and still gets a big revelation at the very end. Truly terrible closure this way. There are other very experienced actors here that you maybe recognize from their looks, but do not really remember the name. Bundschuh would be a great example. Broich as well perhaps and Lott and the man who played Seidel, the main antagonist. I don't think he is credited here (yet).
Let's take a look at the plot now: I think there were definitely more flaws than good moments. Brambach brought some relief here and there like his character is a career criminal and his son is a rising police officer and on one occasion he says something like how he is disappointed what his son turned into with all the promise he had. Or I also really liked Brambach's reaction when he realizes his son is there with him on the stage at the end to perform the song together. That was some quality acting. Very subtle, but very good. The idea for the revelation there on stage after the song was also not a bad one with the cop's boss watching the solution from the police station. Just like we were watching on television basically. Anyway, said boss with the nerdy glasses and strict behavior was a character I did not like at all the way she was written. Not half as entertaining as they wanted her to be and she also almost ruins the scene in which they are all watching the old performance there. Another okay scene. The performance from Hain's character earlier did almost nothing for me though and I found it ridiculous how everybody was so amazed. It reminded me a of a nice Bee Gees tune though. So I already mentioned the boss and Hain's character. These two are prime examples of how the writing especially with the woman went all kinds of wrong here. I will get to Schlott's character and story arc in a second, but let me say now already that her "employees" were nothing better either. Like the scene when Brambach's character's equally criminal buddy throws something at the two cops and says it will explode and they fall to the ground and return immediately afterwards to their boss and tell her that the "bad guys" got away. Of course, these criminals are really not truly vile or something. Not even too capable either.
Now for Schlott's character, basically everything linked to her went wrong. Here, the anti-male element comes fully into force too with how the male protagonist is constantly courting her and gets constantly humiliated too. And still he keeps going for the chance to be with her. Despite her telling that she goes on a date with somebody else and of course the date goes wrong and she funnily says she arrested the man afterwards for what he did. But hey the woman could have everybody, so our little protagonist shall be happy to be allowed to even court her. The final scenes there were especially ridiculous. Like her statement about how she wants him to quit his job and become a musician to be with her. Yeah, that makes sense. Who cares if he always wanted a career with the force. And are we really supposed to believe she was married (and divorced) twice already? Anyway, she keeps humiliating him even further when this trouble with his father was at its most massive and really says he never had a chance with her anyway. And then after the concert, she is all over him again and they kiss in front of the crowd. And what does she do afterwards as we find out in the epilogue? She still uses dating sites. Sure thing. Well, that dude must enjoy the humiliation. Besides, her constant professional entries when she is there with a search warrant, later on with an arrest warrant and in the end at the club too were equally unbearable to watch. The epitome of a failed character. One character I have not mentioned yet, would be female character number four and she is the protagonist's mother and has a serious car accident that causes her to be very injured and lose her memory for a while. This also did not feel too authentic honestly and I am pretty sure it's nonsense from a medical perspective and I can only deal with so much for-the-sake-of-it comedy. So in terms of female characters, four out of four were major disappointments and added only negative aspects.
This is pretty much it then. of course, we are also getting the forced happy ending during which everything is solved of course and everybody is somewhat happy. The aforementioned mother telling us what happened afterwards to the characters was not exactly a revelation either and be it only because, as I just stated, the character was written so disappointingly. Thinking about all of this, there is really a lot negative here and two stars out of five is still very much on the generous side. Indeed without Brambach, I probably would have taken away another two stars. I can only hope that there will be no more movies starring these characters because, as I wrote in the title of my review, one is one too many here already. Crime comedies are a big thing now in Germany (and Austria) and have been for a while and with many, they made several sequels. But many of those are also based on books and this one here is not. The best example, also quality-wise, are of course the Eberhofer films. This one here is not even half as good as those. They also tried some rather black humor on some occasions, but it just wasn't working well at all. Take the scene very early on how we hear the mother is dead and then it was just an error. Felt clumsy how they were too scared for such serious content. Skip this movie. It's the best choice in my opionion. Too weak overall unfortunately.
If you take a look the poster here on imdb, you see some of the key players, central actors. I am not sure if I like the design a lot, but it could be worse too I suppose. The fella on the right may be the closest to a central character here, but the most known is of course the fella on the left. And the inclusion of the woman up there is almost a bit embarrassing because they used a smaller format for her and also in the film her character was not written too well and frequently felt just for the sake of a pretty uninspired romance story. I will get to that later. By the way, looking at the guy on the right, you could this is a GDR film, but no, he plays the role of a police officer, who wants to be transferred to the homicide department where a better job and salary would be waiting for him. The actor there is Ben Münchow, definitely not a big name and what I saw here from him certainly did not get me particularly curious. I still checked and see he's not a rookie but the rather small parts in not very inspired projects really make me question the decision to pick him as a lead here. In some scenes with Brambach, he felt clearly inferior in terms of range and the energy Brambach always brings to his roles. Brambach is of course the man you see on the left and he is one of my favorite German actors. Very experienced and very prolific performer. His likability surely helps him too. I am always glad to see him in movies and he almost always elevates the material, no matter if it's lighter stuff like here or more serious projects. I think he goes for the lighter stuff more often, but then again he was a murder suspect here at some point, so it is pretty serious, but never really felt that way. He was a scene stealer for me for sure. Elisa Schlott is the woman on the left and her I like physically a bit at least, which surprises me a bit because usually I am going for the darker type. Anyway, I still could have done without her character. Maybe the worst writing from the entire film. Jeanette Hain is a definite ccontender for that as well. Adds almost nothing and still gets a big revelation at the very end. Truly terrible closure this way. There are other very experienced actors here that you maybe recognize from their looks, but do not really remember the name. Bundschuh would be a great example. Broich as well perhaps and Lott and the man who played Seidel, the main antagonist. I don't think he is credited here (yet).
Let's take a look at the plot now: I think there were definitely more flaws than good moments. Brambach brought some relief here and there like his character is a career criminal and his son is a rising police officer and on one occasion he says something like how he is disappointed what his son turned into with all the promise he had. Or I also really liked Brambach's reaction when he realizes his son is there with him on the stage at the end to perform the song together. That was some quality acting. Very subtle, but very good. The idea for the revelation there on stage after the song was also not a bad one with the cop's boss watching the solution from the police station. Just like we were watching on television basically. Anyway, said boss with the nerdy glasses and strict behavior was a character I did not like at all the way she was written. Not half as entertaining as they wanted her to be and she also almost ruins the scene in which they are all watching the old performance there. Another okay scene. The performance from Hain's character earlier did almost nothing for me though and I found it ridiculous how everybody was so amazed. It reminded me a of a nice Bee Gees tune though. So I already mentioned the boss and Hain's character. These two are prime examples of how the writing especially with the woman went all kinds of wrong here. I will get to Schlott's character and story arc in a second, but let me say now already that her "employees" were nothing better either. Like the scene when Brambach's character's equally criminal buddy throws something at the two cops and says it will explode and they fall to the ground and return immediately afterwards to their boss and tell her that the "bad guys" got away. Of course, these criminals are really not truly vile or something. Not even too capable either.
Now for Schlott's character, basically everything linked to her went wrong. Here, the anti-male element comes fully into force too with how the male protagonist is constantly courting her and gets constantly humiliated too. And still he keeps going for the chance to be with her. Despite her telling that she goes on a date with somebody else and of course the date goes wrong and she funnily says she arrested the man afterwards for what he did. But hey the woman could have everybody, so our little protagonist shall be happy to be allowed to even court her. The final scenes there were especially ridiculous. Like her statement about how she wants him to quit his job and become a musician to be with her. Yeah, that makes sense. Who cares if he always wanted a career with the force. And are we really supposed to believe she was married (and divorced) twice already? Anyway, she keeps humiliating him even further when this trouble with his father was at its most massive and really says he never had a chance with her anyway. And then after the concert, she is all over him again and they kiss in front of the crowd. And what does she do afterwards as we find out in the epilogue? She still uses dating sites. Sure thing. Well, that dude must enjoy the humiliation. Besides, her constant professional entries when she is there with a search warrant, later on with an arrest warrant and in the end at the club too were equally unbearable to watch. The epitome of a failed character. One character I have not mentioned yet, would be female character number four and she is the protagonist's mother and has a serious car accident that causes her to be very injured and lose her memory for a while. This also did not feel too authentic honestly and I am pretty sure it's nonsense from a medical perspective and I can only deal with so much for-the-sake-of-it comedy. So in terms of female characters, four out of four were major disappointments and added only negative aspects.
This is pretty much it then. of course, we are also getting the forced happy ending during which everything is solved of course and everybody is somewhat happy. The aforementioned mother telling us what happened afterwards to the characters was not exactly a revelation either and be it only because, as I just stated, the character was written so disappointingly. Thinking about all of this, there is really a lot negative here and two stars out of five is still very much on the generous side. Indeed without Brambach, I probably would have taken away another two stars. I can only hope that there will be no more movies starring these characters because, as I wrote in the title of my review, one is one too many here already. Crime comedies are a big thing now in Germany (and Austria) and have been for a while and with many, they made several sequels. But many of those are also based on books and this one here is not. The best example, also quality-wise, are of course the Eberhofer films. This one here is not even half as good as those. They also tried some rather black humor on some occasions, but it just wasn't working well at all. Take the scene very early on how we hear the mother is dead and then it was just an error. Felt clumsy how they were too scared for such serious content. Skip this movie. It's the best choice in my opionion. Too weak overall unfortunately.
