"Plötzlich Türke", which means "Suddenly a Turk", is a German television film from 2016, so this one will soon have its 5th anniversary. The director here is Isabel Braak and even if there are 3 riters credited who were in charge of turning the book this is based on into a screenplay, she is not one of these. As Braak was not even 30 when this was made, she is definitely among the next generation of German filmmakers and we will see where her career is heading quality-wise. Now German small screen releases are never super long really, but this one here is especially short because it runs for slightly over 80 minutes only. From the subject you can see already that they are elaborating on a topic that is not uncommon at all when it comes to German movies, namely the impact of foreign culture, especially Turkish culture and there are so so many immigrants from Turkey here, some already stretching over several generations. Still, even if it says so here on imdb, this is obviously not a film in the Turkish language, but this should be clear to everybody who reads the names of the director and writers, the cast and of course the film itself. The central character here is played by Oliver Konietzny and he was not particularly good I must say and that is already pretty gently-speaking. So no surprise thee aren't any big names in the cast here if the protagonist is already not a quality actor and not famous either. I should add that because there are many famous actors (actually actresses especially) who are pretty well-known, but really bad most of the time. The best example is probably Veronica Ferres. Still, they don't need any big name overrated actors to turn this into a weak movie. The lesser known actors here manage very well on their own to do so. Admittedly, the script is not really doing them any favors most of the time. Nina Petri is probably the most known cast member here playing the central character's mother and Sönke Möhring is also alays easy to identify, even if he is barely in this film. Blink and he is gone.
Okay, as for the story, we have a young man ho is leading a nice life, works as a delivery driver, has a happy relationship with his girlfriend and is about to become a dad soon. But then it all goes south. Well, first of all they still find a new bigger apartment, but then it does when the central character finds out he actually has Turkish citizenship and not German just like he always thought. His reaction to that is one weak example of writing and acting. It feels as if he never even had any connection ith Turkey, but the truth is he knows his father lives there, so the idea is not too absurd admittedly. All that follows is linked to his desperate attempts to get back his German citizenship and as wwe find out right at the very start in a bit of a preview is that he even ends up somehow in the Turkish army as a consequence. Okay, well this film is definitely very much on the absurd site on many occasions and never realistic. Although it tries to be sometimes. However, the only thing that really keeps this movie from becoming a total failure is that you could see they weren't taking this film seriously and most of all it is about the comedy. In a failure film, the protagonist would have managed to get away from the police at the airport, but here he didn't. And the father in the second half is also somewhat entertaining I won't deny that and somehow made it work despite how over the top the character is. Best example is when he sings happily that his son called him dad. So I was kinda glad he reappeared near the end again because there wasn't a single moment when I felt Konietzny could carry this film on his own. Luckily, he has supporting actors here and there who help him a bit. You already see during the voice-over narration (for said preview) in the very first minute that he simply isn't good enough and somebody else should have been cast. Another moment I found funny was when the lady at the office calls security and what she says exactly, somethink like "drunk and resilient" or so. The girlfriend found it funny and so did I. Speaking of the girlfriend, I felt she was clearly too old for him, but that's just my opinion I guess. Their relationship also get that almost obligatory pseudo drama near the end when she rushes back to her parents, but you always know they will end up together again. Actually I liked that they did not include a stupid addition how the parents are badmouthing him. This would also have been the case in a Ferres/Neubauer/Thomalla/Furtwängler/Speidel/Sägebrecht movie, just to list all these horribly overrated German actresses void of talent. But still, this film here also had many sequences that were bad or added nothing. The ending with the woman giving birth and the band being back together was definitely too happy and really unrealistic for me. Speaking of the band, this is maybe the best/worst example. We hear the music and honestly are we really supposed to believe thiese guys were good enough for a contract? Their music was utterly horrible honestly. What is even more embarrassing is that looking at the cast apparently these folks are actually a real band? You gotta be kidding me. Their singing was worse than everybody's acting in these 82 minutes and that means quite something. Okay, finally just one specific scene, namely when he gets that fake ID card and there is that badass young woman who coonstantly is about to send her brute to beat the protagonist up. That was also very much for the sake of it, even if it was just make-believe. They did not feel half as badass as they wanted to be and besides, you will not keep any customers with this kind of approach. Okay, this would be all then. There are many clearly inferior movies to this one here (especially from German (after)noon television) and that is why I will still give it 2 stars out of 5), even if I considered giving less. By no means I would say you should check it out. Best is to skip here and I hope that Braak can step things up in the future when she has better screenplays at her disposal. Thumbs down overall and let me add that I have not read the book this is from, so I cannot speak about similarities and differences movie and literary original. The movie, however, also was not good enough to get me curious about the book.
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