Märzmelodie

"Märzmelodie" is an out of time experience: a warm-hearted and old-fashioned, yet thoroughly original boy-meets-girl story. It starts with a charming, 1950s style animated title sequence that gently morphs into real-life action, resembling Marc Webb's use of impromptu graffiti in his 2005 video for Daniel Powter's "Bad Day". Within the first few minutes, gorgeous Katja (Jana Pallaske) breaks Thilo's heart, only to have her heart broken by Thilo's best friend Florian in turn. Good thing Thilo (Jan Henrik Stahlberg) has friends acting as not-so-clandestine matchmakers, arranging for him to get romantically involved with Anna, a burnt-out schoolteacher (Alexandra Neldel). It's nice to see Stahlberg, the prototypical hard man of "Muxmäuschenstill" and "Knallhart", as a head-in-the-clouds kind of guy. Touching performance by Inga Busch as Anna's best friend, a long-suffering working mum. The action is interspersed with 10-second snippets from popular songs, lip-synced by the actors. Highlights include Rio Reiser, Udo Lindenberg, Westernhagen, Nena and the immortal Zarah Leander.

...because they see a great movie (On connaît la chanson - Alain Resnais) and think they'll have to do a German version (clandestine of course - they would never mention they're ripping it off) producing an insanely lousy, snail-paced and boring film with boring acting. Somehow practically all actors got the idea they're supposed to say their lines in this fake stuttering way so as to draw out the already drawn out scenes even more. One really sits there and hopes that at least the actors would talk a bit faster to get some life onto the screen. Jan Henrik Stahlberg does this boy thing trying to look cute, but, alas, at best he looks out of place - as if the only thought he has in his mind is, let's get out of here quickly. Then there is Alexandra Neldel, she's the 'ingenue' in this film. Well, she's trying as hard to be the German sweetheart as Stahlberg is trying to be cute, it's not working though.

All the faults of course lie in the writer-director's hands. Terrible script, terrible mis-en-scene, no pacing, none, OK, if uninspiring cinematography.

It's hard to find nowadays an even mildly good movie that is capable of making you leave the theater with a good feeling about yourself, about the others, about love, about people in general. This movie does just that.

I don't know the budget for this movie, but I assume it wasn't anything near the Hollywood ones. Yet, this movie has great actors and almost everyone does a great job at his/her part. The production is great, the cinematography is very good and so is the lighting and the editing.

The music is also very good indeed and what most pleased me (I usually HATE musicals) is that it never got in the way of the movie and it's storytelling, it never got more important than the other elements of the movie (the acting, the visual references, etc).

The moments where the actors sing (or dub, I can't really tell) never got boring because the music was good and the singing was kept very short and also because what they were singing actually made sense and was important part of their lines.

Normally I would give this movie a 7 out of 10 (the story could be stronger and a little bit less predictable), but what got my vote up higher to 9 out of 10 is that the general tone of the movie was really sweet.

That a great movie to watch with you loved one! Do it if you can...

The idea is, people talk to express their thoughts and then start to sing to express their emotions. As a bit of originality, there are popular German pop songs of the last 30 years.

Question: What can be wrong about that? In this particular movie, the actors don't *sing* on their own, they don't even really pretend to: they just move their mouthes in the rhythm of a song, that comes from nowhere and has mostly very little connection to the situation.

I have no idea, why the movie has rather nice rating. You should pay attention to the fact, there are very few votes. Don't waste your time and money.