Go for Zucker

This movie starts with the main character lying in a coma in a hospital ward, attended by two orderlies. The unconscious main character is heard in a voice over, saying that the orderlies are gay. The orderlies kiss. I watched this in a DVD version and I have the suspicion that this is supposed to be funny – it said „comedy" on the DVD case, after all and it goes on like that. Had I seen this in a movie theater I probably would have heard part of the audience roar with laughter, because it is so funny – and because they are supposed to sit in a comedy. While it is fascinating to think about what it is funny and what isn't, this movie unfortunately only delivers arguments about what isn't.

Brilliant brains can MAKE anything funny, people like Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder or Mel Brooks have proved that fact. But you have to know the „mechanics", I suppose. Director and co-scriptwriter Dani Levy does not bother about those mechanics, he thinks that certain things simply ARE funny, the fact that two orderlies are gay and kiss over a man in a coma, for example. Do not get me wrong, some people can MAKE that funny, Dani Levy can't, not for me, anyway.

The main problem I have with this movie is that I can't see a reason behind the way the main characters behave. I could not understand why the two brothers, one an orthodox Jew from West Germany one a third class carbon copy of Fast Eddie Felson from former East Germany so strongly disliked each other. They are both rather bland characters. Their children are boring apart from the fact that they are sexually attracted to each other (well, one is a lesbian now but raises the daughter she has with her cousin). But even these incestuous relationships – if anything they are embarrassing - just come through as an excuse because the scriptwriters could not come up with anything better.

The acting is not bad, Udo Semel I actually came to like quite a lot although he reminded me more of ex chancellor Helmut Kohl (a lighter version) than of a venerable Orthodox Jew. The direction in itself is not really bad either, but maybe Levy should stick to directing movies, leaving the scriptwriting to someone else. Now I heard he did a comedy about Hitler. Oi, Vai!

Lighten up. It's a movie. It's not real life. Enjoy it for what it is. I laughed out loud in the theater continually. These are romantic movie characters. My belief was definitely suspended. i recommend this movie to others constantly as one of the best I've seen this year. Reality TV is no more real than these characters. It's refreshing to finally see a German comedy rather than the pap that the American cinema churns out. There are many twists in this movie that will add levity to your day. Go Go Go And take someone with you. Germany has become so strict and gloomy in the world's eye that it's great they can cross boundaries that many are scared to talk about. C'mon we're all people. We all have beliefs. We should be able to laugh at ourselves and certainly have to ability to see the human in this mortal existence.

This movie is really great. I fully enjoyed it and it was fun and gives you an idea of what the Jewsish community would have added to German society if they would not have been killed during the Holocaust. This is a sad thing and I say that as a German. I love to see what light hearted story Dani Levy made and it's really excellent actresses and actors. This movie is entertaining, easy to watch but has it's twists. Personally I really admire the screenplay of the actresses and actord -it is really wonderful and sets up a 'believable' environment for the movie. The fight between the brothers is also very noticeable.

Wow, I can't say for how long I have been waiting for a film like this! I was always looking enviously over to America where they have films with, say, a dozen characters and one of them happens to be Jewish. But neither the Shoah is mentioned, nor Israel nor any other "typically Jewish" topics. These characters are Jewish like others are catholic or Mormon or atheist. Great. We never had this here in the last decades and I wondered when at last we would be treated to films like that made in Germany.

This film might not be 100% brilliant, but it's funny, it's very good and worth its while and money. Originally made only for Arte TV, they decided to get it into cinema first. And what a great idea this was! Hopefully more films like this will follow, so that we all can go another step on the way back to normal. Because it is normal to see black German characters, Turkish-German characters and Jewish German characters and what else in films and series and plays. So, writers, sit yourself down and write. Directors and producers are hopefully waiting for good scripts! They better be...

"Go for Zucker! (Alles auf Zucker!)" is a broad, comic take on East vs. West reconciliation issues in Germany today that was done better in "Goodbye, Lenin!."

Co-writer/director Dani Levy goes further in making German audiences comfortable to laugh at their 20th century history by somewhat ridiculously adding in the Jewish issue, both past and contemporary. He makes it safe to joke about the Holocaust and its aftermath.

There have been countless comedies through the decades that have scheming beneficiaries pretend something or other in order to claim an inheritance (marriage, children, etc. etc.). Here, the premise is Jewish brothers and their families separated by the construction of the Berlin Wall need to reconcile and be observant Jews. But the joke, as they accuse each other, is that one grew up with the religious attitudes of Stalin and the other like the Ayatollah.

This is first played for very broad laughs, as the ex-Communist brother's estranged Aryan wife frantically tries to learn Jewish household rules through a kind of "Kosher for Dummies" book, while he's off gambling. Similarly, the Orthodox Jewish family displays every stiff visual stereotype of piety known to film, from the long beards to the triple chins on the wife.

The actors playing the older generation who lived through Germany's traumas are very world-weary effective. There's a lot of running around like a French parlor comedy. Their adult kids are mostly silly and too slapsticky sexually confused. Maybe it's a German comic thing that the men are all passive dolts, the women are sexually aggressive and their relationships make no sense.

The best parts of the film are when the brother from the East is comically doing his funny grifter thing to get into a pool tournament and, at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, when the brothers actually start to communicate about how history tore up their family. This makes history personal and poignant amidst the laughs. Everyone turns out to have faults and secrets, including the rabbi who is supposed to moderate. Some of the Frankfurt vs. Berlin jokes probably have more meaning to the German audience.

For all the film's silliness and stereotypes, it does end up endearing.

The subtitling is very difficult for an American audience. The opening credits are very funny, with the Eastern brother talking to and over the camera (a technique that continues throughout the swooping camera work). However, the subtitles are mixed in with the credits and are impossible to read. The subtitlers just assumed that any English speakers coming to see the film would understand Yiddish, as all the Yiddish expressions by the Western brother and his family are just transliterated as Yiddish and are not translated, though some words are not that widely part of American conversation and could be a problem for some viewers.