"Copacabana" is a German television movie that premiered at a film festival back in 2007 and about half a year later it was shown to everybody on the small screen here in my country. Today there was a rerun. It runs for 1.5 hours approximately, slightly under, and this is the most common duration for TV films here in Germany. The director is Austrian filmmaker Xaver Schwarzenberger and he began in the 1960s already as a cinematographer, quite a while before he also started directing films. However, there are many movies in his body of work that are simply not good at all and that is already a pretty gentle way to put it. The script is by Stefan Rogall, who is definitely not as prolific as Schwarzenberger, but he also has his fair share of failures that are part of his career. So the expectations should be really low for this film here and even then they are probably still disappointed. What had me most curious about this project from way over a decade ago was the inclusion of Bruno Ganz as lead actor. He appeared in this only three years after his perhaps career-defining "Downfall", which admittedly surprises me a lot because the difference in quality between these two films could not be any bigger. This one here is a mess, even if the cast is definitely above-average for a TV movie. The name Ganz definitely attracted several actors that German film buffs will immediately recognize and most of them you usually see much more often in a movie theater and not on television. You can check out the cast list for yourself for a more detailed approach, but let me just mention Christiane Paul, Wotan Wilke Möhring, Devid Striesow and Liane Forestieri (the most beautiful cast member perhaps), although probably at least the two men (especially Möhring) were not as famous and popular as they are now in 2020. Oh yeah, Friedrich von Thun is in it as well, but even if he is famous, he also appeared in so many television films and honestly even if I don't think he is the greatest actor, I felt kinda bad because his character was maybe the one who was ritten the worst from everybody involved.
Okay now I will elaborate a bit on why I think this film deserves the lowest rating possible. It already starts in a fairly cringeworthy fashion when we see Ganz' character surprise his wife for their weeding anniversary by bringing breakfast to her bed and of course he pours the joice all over the sheets. This was already bad enough, but things get worse when we see him impersonate a torero or at least latin lover with a rose in his mouth. These two moments were already a perfect example of how this film can only turn out a massive failure and it shows that even the best actors cannot make scripts work that have no quality whatsoever. Sad to see Ganz agree to appear in a movie like this. So you could imagine whet less talented actors do with a screenplay like this. Things stay that way. In the film's better moments it is just bland and boring, in its weaker moments it is an abomination. The dialogue writing was also extremely poor. There are many examples for that where people recited lines that felt clearly written, which was partially because of the delivery too, but mostly because of how people in these specific situations would not talk like that. Just one example that stayed in my mind for whatever reason is when Paul's character talks about her grandmother's cocoa (chocolate milk). This specific moment was also from the worst scenes/sequence the movie had to offer as a whole, namely that "fateful" night when seemingly everybody is walking around for whatever reason. The way how those who wish not to be caught accidentally make noises is just painful to watch. Just like the idea of one character's lover being on the verge of having sex with his partner's sister. And don't even get me started about why Möhring's character was hanging around in a specific room that very moment. There is talk before these scenes between Paul's character and her potential affair and it is embarrassing to watch how she talks about how guys wanted her sister instead of her all the time because she was younger and also what the guy says as a response. So yeah, this was really when the film hit rock bottom.
Sadly, there is more. Just take Nicole Heesters. I have not mentioned her yet because I think she is not a good actress and mostly known because of Johannes only. Her character has an affair with a doctor and is about to leave her husband on their wedding anniversary. Okay, that is bizarre enough already, but things get a lot worse, namely when Ganz' character collapses he is treated... Yep! You guessed right. By said doctor. I mean there is only one doctor in town right, not exactly a profession that many people have. Sigh. Unreal stuff. I also really felt bad for Ganz during that scene because the explanation why he did not tell his wife about his former heart attack was so absurd and strange and also when he starts tallking about how he knows she has an affair. It felt as if Ganz knew very well how much stupidity he tried to deliver there. The oldest cast member is Erni Mangold and actually she is still alive today in her early 90s, so the order is different than in the movie with Ganz sadly having died last year. Mangold also gets one cringeworthy scene, well one especially cringeworthy scene, namely the one when she is sleeping and her character's daughter enters the room and for some weird reason she thinks that her mother could be dead because she is sleeping. So weird. She initially does not even try to wake her before thinking she could be dead. The only purpose of this scene is really to create some potential drama and have the audience think she could be dead. But it makes absolutely zero sense in terms of the story. It's a big mess. Everything here. Also how at the end the old woman really dies, but for some reason that also does not make sense it helped everybody and their broken relationships to watch photos from the old woman's youth (and romance) in wanting to give each other a chance again despite how literally every romantic relationship in this film was broken in a way where fixing it seems highly unlikely. So more lack of realism eventually only for the sake of a happy ending. It was already tough toaccept that Heesters' character for some reason all of a sudden is happy with her husband again because nothing really happened that could have changed her mind, but doing the same nonsense with all three other couples (the children and their partners) is literally an insult to the audience's intelligence. In other words: You must be very dumb to appreciate this film. They tried to hide it eventually by including these photos from the actors when they were much younger, which was really a nice inclusion and kinda cute, but it had nothing to do with the story at all, so more "Verdummung" as we say here in Germany. Massive thumbs-down from me for this movie, although it really is so bad at times that it does not even deserve the term "movie" or only in the sense of the fact that it includes moving pictures. Why Bruno why? A definite contender for this legendary actor's worst career effort. Oh well, I guess nobody's perfect, except John Cazale maybe. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. The title is also a bad joke. There iis no connection with Brazil in this film, it is only named like that because a song with this title is referenced once or twice, but never by any means is the inclusion of this song meaningful enough to name the entire movie after said song. So they messed up again. No surprise. I stopped counting the exact number. Watch something else instead.
Okay now I will elaborate a bit on why I think this film deserves the lowest rating possible. It already starts in a fairly cringeworthy fashion when we see Ganz' character surprise his wife for their weeding anniversary by bringing breakfast to her bed and of course he pours the joice all over the sheets. This was already bad enough, but things get worse when we see him impersonate a torero or at least latin lover with a rose in his mouth. These two moments were already a perfect example of how this film can only turn out a massive failure and it shows that even the best actors cannot make scripts work that have no quality whatsoever. Sad to see Ganz agree to appear in a movie like this. So you could imagine whet less talented actors do with a screenplay like this. Things stay that way. In the film's better moments it is just bland and boring, in its weaker moments it is an abomination. The dialogue writing was also extremely poor. There are many examples for that where people recited lines that felt clearly written, which was partially because of the delivery too, but mostly because of how people in these specific situations would not talk like that. Just one example that stayed in my mind for whatever reason is when Paul's character talks about her grandmother's cocoa (chocolate milk). This specific moment was also from the worst scenes/sequence the movie had to offer as a whole, namely that "fateful" night when seemingly everybody is walking around for whatever reason. The way how those who wish not to be caught accidentally make noises is just painful to watch. Just like the idea of one character's lover being on the verge of having sex with his partner's sister. And don't even get me started about why Möhring's character was hanging around in a specific room that very moment. There is talk before these scenes between Paul's character and her potential affair and it is embarrassing to watch how she talks about how guys wanted her sister instead of her all the time because she was younger and also what the guy says as a response. So yeah, this was really when the film hit rock bottom.
Sadly, there is more. Just take Nicole Heesters. I have not mentioned her yet because I think she is not a good actress and mostly known because of Johannes only. Her character has an affair with a doctor and is about to leave her husband on their wedding anniversary. Okay, that is bizarre enough already, but things get a lot worse, namely when Ganz' character collapses he is treated... Yep! You guessed right. By said doctor. I mean there is only one doctor in town right, not exactly a profession that many people have. Sigh. Unreal stuff. I also really felt bad for Ganz during that scene because the explanation why he did not tell his wife about his former heart attack was so absurd and strange and also when he starts tallking about how he knows she has an affair. It felt as if Ganz knew very well how much stupidity he tried to deliver there. The oldest cast member is Erni Mangold and actually she is still alive today in her early 90s, so the order is different than in the movie with Ganz sadly having died last year. Mangold also gets one cringeworthy scene, well one especially cringeworthy scene, namely the one when she is sleeping and her character's daughter enters the room and for some weird reason she thinks that her mother could be dead because she is sleeping. So weird. She initially does not even try to wake her before thinking she could be dead. The only purpose of this scene is really to create some potential drama and have the audience think she could be dead. But it makes absolutely zero sense in terms of the story. It's a big mess. Everything here. Also how at the end the old woman really dies, but for some reason that also does not make sense it helped everybody and their broken relationships to watch photos from the old woman's youth (and romance) in wanting to give each other a chance again despite how literally every romantic relationship in this film was broken in a way where fixing it seems highly unlikely. So more lack of realism eventually only for the sake of a happy ending. It was already tough toaccept that Heesters' character for some reason all of a sudden is happy with her husband again because nothing really happened that could have changed her mind, but doing the same nonsense with all three other couples (the children and their partners) is literally an insult to the audience's intelligence. In other words: You must be very dumb to appreciate this film. They tried to hide it eventually by including these photos from the actors when they were much younger, which was really a nice inclusion and kinda cute, but it had nothing to do with the story at all, so more "Verdummung" as we say here in Germany. Massive thumbs-down from me for this movie, although it really is so bad at times that it does not even deserve the term "movie" or only in the sense of the fact that it includes moving pictures. Why Bruno why? A definite contender for this legendary actor's worst career effort. Oh well, I guess nobody's perfect, except John Cazale maybe. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. The title is also a bad joke. There iis no connection with Brazil in this film, it is only named like that because a song with this title is referenced once or twice, but never by any means is the inclusion of this song meaningful enough to name the entire movie after said song. So they messed up again. No surprise. I stopped counting the exact number. Watch something else instead.
