User reviews

Even Goethe was young once (yes I know, some things seem completely ridiculous now don't they) and was not the genius we all came to know ... Wait, do we really know him? Actually I wouldn't claim to know him. So we know his work and may like that or not. Think it's great or not. But what do we know about the human behind that?

Only way to make the movie more awkward would have been, to show him as a 2-year old (though that would be almost intriguing ... and I might even line up to watch that). As it is, we get to see him, as we have not seen him before. So the filmmakers have the freedom to show a human side on him. If any of this is based on anything in particular? I wouldn't be able to tell you.

What I can tell you, is that this is very light entertainment. It also tells us, that even great persons are people too. If you can live with that and enjoy a little story that has no aim to please anything more than lightweight entertainment, than you can't do anything wrong by watching this

As a child I was already an avid reader, and nothing fascinated me more than Goethe. I knew many of his poems and some of his plays by heart and up to today, I find comfort in rereading his work and nearly three hundred years later everything he wrote has still relevance. Since many years I have three heroes and all three of them have a name starting with G: Goethe, Gandhi and Gaudi. so I never miss a book or a movie telling their stories, but sometimes I miss the movies in the theater, as they are not main stream. That was the case with the Goethe movie and I happened to find it in my local library. My first reaction to the movie was not so positive. I felt like these film makers were turning the German geniuses into some kind of crazy persons, I especially felt that way with Amadeus and also Beethoven.. And the first scenes of this movie worried me that they were trying to do the same thing to Goethe. There is this entry monologue in Faust when he talks about having studied so much and learned nothing." Ah! Now I've done Philosophy, I've finished Law and Medicine, And sadly even Theology: Taken fierce pains, from end to end. Now here I am, a fool for sure! No wiser than I was before:"

I always saw Goethe as Faust, a well=educated but disillusioned man seeking for the meaning of life, not a desperate love-sick youngster.. But when the movie continued I started to like it . Eighteenth century Germany is captured quite convincingly, the costumes, the sets and the landscape are beautiful and the acting persuasive. It transported me into a fantasy trying to imagine how Goethe lived as a young man. I had visited his house in Weimar after the wall fell and some of the places in Italy he favored, which helped me to understand him better.. I deeply resent the English translation of the movie title, this movie has nothing in common with Shakespeare in love and is much more realistic. I will certainly buy the DVD to add to my collection of favorite movies.

I like it !

After the final credits, it was a kind of diagnosis because I do not know what to expect from this film, proposing a young Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

I liked for humor and acting, Alexander Fehling proposing not only for physical resemblance, a credible young hero, the story being easy, nice and seductive and the humor just working in fair manner.

But the essential contribution seems the work of. Moritz Bleibtreu who proposes right tones for his character, not ignoring honest job of. Henri Hubchen.

Difficult to say too much , except correct and be just grateful for the use of Sufferances of Werther , one of books of my childhood . So, correct portrait, a generous slice of romance and fun and the charming end.

It's well made but you can see it's made for a contemporary viewer and thus lacks the kind of historical reality atmoshphere you find in some productions. But still worth a watch.