Die Känguru-Chroniken

If you're expecting any new comedy in this movie: no, there isn't. If you're expecting the movie is at least made in the same dry comedy way like the books: nope, it's made in a comedian way maybe even Till Schweiger would be embarrassed of. The film maker took all of the book jokes and put them into slapstick contexts that it's just cringy.

And then these quotations of Pulp Fiction or The big Lebowski. The movie quoted it. But no further jokes / extension. It just took the same dialogs. Like you didn't see those movies.

Super bad movie, although the the novels are great. Made for an audience without a brain. Sad :(

3 stars are awarded for the kangaroo animation. Otherwise, the question is why you have to produce such a film at all. One would have "simply" used a drawing style to take out the actor discussion and to put the quick, precise jokes on point.

So it's just a normal German movie and in international comparison it's just 3 Imdb stars. Does money eat your brain here, Mr.Kling?

The movie is everything I hoped it wouldn't be and I can't believe the author gave his blessings. It's a typical german comedy. In a bad way. Which means the humor is very silly. Which doesn't do the ingenious novels by Marc-Uwe Kling any justice, because the humor there is witty and more on the dry side. What made me cringe the most was what I'm sure will be sold off as movie "citations". Which even if you know they are meant like that just come off as blatant and shameless stealing. As a viewer I felt insulted. A citation has to do bring in new elements. It has to hint at the original just to show the appreciation for it. Put it in another context. Not stealing entire scenes and dialogues and even end with the same punchline. If you're outright stealing at least have the modesty not to copycat material that everyone and his grandmother has seen hundreds of times. The interaction between the kangaroo and the main character is unconvincing and weak. It looks like he acts to thin air. Which is made worse by the fact that the kangaroo's voice is coming from the off and doesn't fit in with the ambient sound. There's no reverb, no nothing. But you can see it's lips move, so it feels just awkward. The animation is not the best either. All the punchlines that put me to tears while listening to the audio books just don't fire because the timing is off. The story they've build around the source material is plainly dumb and uninspired tv-quality stuff. As is the cinematography, if you wanna call it that. German telenovela level. There's nothing I like about the movie which the books didn't do better.

I am totally disappointed. Given the good quality books of Kling it is hard to imagine that anyone could produce a worse movie than this. 25 years ago, the Berlin dialogues would at least be kind of original, today it is full old cliché and this world is obviously long gone as well. What is even worse, the movie has not one likeable character in it. Always a very bad sign. Avoid.

We all know that books are better than their respective filmed version. There is rarely a movie which is more enjoyable than the counterpart book. But from the likes of Marc Uwe-Kling - who even joked about making a movie out of this book in the very book - I definitely expected more.

This movie takes a number of random scenes from the books and somehow plasters them together into a more-or-less, but really rather less, coherent story. There is a more prominent focus on Jörg Dwigs and the nazis who were more of a real threat than in the book and the story tried to have a focus on some AfD-based jokes. But the focus was really not that funny, most such jokes already done thousands of times and the storyline just a mess. Even the actors didn't seem convincing and the best parts of the book were left out.

All in all unfortunately very disappointing and unexpected for such a fantastic book series. What a pity.