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torstenscholz87
Reviews
Office Space (1999)
Forget about The Office, THIS is the greatest office satire ever!!
This film once more proves that Mike Judge really is a genius of satire, subversiveness and black humor and capable of much more than just Beavis and Butthead. Starting as a satirical observation of the grotesqueness and triteness of everyday office work, it soon develops into a great farce when the main protagonist falls into a sate of hypnosis and finds a way of escaping his everyday life when he and his co-workers have a not-so-legal plan of making money, but of course, in the end it all fails. But what's much more important than the plot are the great gags about the stupidity of office life and the great characters that are neither too stereotypical nor too much over the top although their trite and pointless life and work makes them all more or less mad, but that's just what happens when you do stupid office work for years. In a nutshell, it's one of the greatest and most underrated comedy films of all time and everyone who does a job he hates himself will relate to it.
Der Tatortreiniger (2011)
Disappointing
This series was very successful in Germany and got mostly sparkling reviews from audiences, TV critics and feuilletons all over. Why? Just why? If this is the best and funniest thing German TV has produced in decades, as many people claim it to be, it's just another sad proof that German TV and especially German comedy of nowadays absolutely sucks and is still light years away from the quality of US-American, British or Northern European TV. The scripts and "jokes" are awfully unfunny, outdated and unoriginal and might have been fresh and innovative in the early 80s. The acting is dull, and overall there is just nothing really new or witty to it. This is a shame because we Germans actually have some great comedians that prove that we actually can be very funny. If you want to see some really good German Comedy, you should rather watch the output of people like Loriot, Otto, Hape Kerkeling, Helmut Dietl, Familie Heinz Becker or Gerhard Polt.
Næturvaktin (2007)
Best comedy I've seen in a long time
Iceland remains a magic place. People like Björk and Sigur Ros have shown the world that the Icelandic can make beautiful and unconventional music, but what is still rather unknown is that they can also produce great films and TV series. This comedy-drama series about the staff of a Shell gas station in Reykjavik is the funniest and most charming sitcom I've seen in years and can absolutely compete with sitcoms from "traditional" sitcom nations like the USA and UK. When you watch the first couple of episodes, you may at first find it rather tedious and just another bland variation of The Office, but if you stick with it, you will find out that the characters are very well written and beautifully nuanced and superbly acted, and the gags get better and more black and lead to some very funny laugh-out-loud moments like you don't see them that often in most of today's comedy series. Jon Gnarr as the manic night shift boss is terrific, probably the best "bad boss" since David Brent, but Olafur and Daniel are very strong and believable characters as well. There is no English dubbing, but if you watch it with English subtitles, you will have absolutely no problem understanding it, as the dialogue is very simple and doesn't rely on wordplay.