"Männer lügen nicht", which means "Men don't lie", is a German television film from 2010, sot his one has its 10th anniversary this year and the director here is Bettina Woernle. looking at her body of work, she has made films since the 1970s I think, which means she already had a great deal of experience back in 2010 for sure and it must be kind of sobering when, after so many decades in the industry, you end up with (lack of) quality like this movie. So I feel a bit bad for her, but then aggain nobody forced her to accept the job. The two writers are Knarr and Winges, younger than the director, and these two have worked together on several occasions in the past, also for films that are not entirely fogotten like "Crazy Race" (several) and "Erkan & Stefan". So yeah, you are not wrong if you say they may not have the talent to come up with quality screenplays when it comes to comedy movies. Luckily, however, if this is the majority of projects they worked on, then it is still a good thing because honestly with this film here they showed us that in terms of drama, they are even more void of any kind of talent. One thing I find a bit baffling here is that while Brückner, Knüfken and one of the Vilsmaier daughters are not nobodies, they still are far from big names and most of the time, these German television films have at least a somewhat big name playing the title character. Not so here. Actually, the actress who plays the main character here is really not anybody I remember at all from other films and that says a lot because I have seen really many. Then again, with a script like this, you should not complain about individual performances because, even if the actors are not doing a fine jjob most of the time either, the most talented actors on the planet could not have made this mess work.
Let me give you a few examples: It already starts embarrassingly with the scene at the cemetery and the one woman running there to the other to tell her something. Poor beginning. Not much later, the duo goes clubbing together and there they have an argument that really makes me question (wuth all the mean stuff they said), how we can see them as friends (actually as BFFs, that is what the film wants us to believe) for the rest of the movie and also for a long time before the movie. It just feels very fake. When Knüfken's character comes into play, things are not much better. The story about him looking like the deceased man was intended to be the emotional highlight of the film, but it is just really shoddy and poorly executed. And that makes it even worse because this film does make it very obvious they were taking itself and the plot seriously and there is no comedy in here whatsoever. Simply horrible. There are many other aspects and twists that suck here for sure and if I listed each and every one of these, then I would definitely run into the character limit sooner or later, so I keep it shorter. Another inclusion that must be mentioned though is the one about the guy who has been tricking women out of their money. And his fatherhood. Words cannot express how unrealistic and messy all this was. Sure took a special kind of failure in terms of screenplay here in order to make a story involving a sweet girl like Vilsmaier seem completely out of place. She played the daughter. So yeah it was just a mess. Be it his change in mind when all of a sudden he does not only care about her, but even went to an adoption agency? Yeah right. Talk about rushed. But the perhaps most stupid moment of the entire film (except a really terrible scene involving somebody confessing his love) was when we find out about his sentence. Rushed again the whole trial and what I mean specifically is when the people start applauding there. Or I should say "the women" and I have no idea what this was supposed to mean. Was it all the ones he tricked and they still like him or did he win over a few hearts of lonely women in the audience already? It was just ridiculous. Just like the entire film. And certainly not in a good way. The razzie here (although almost all would have deserved it) goes to the actress who played the protagonist's best friend. I will spare you the name, so she won't be associated with acting through my review because that is clearly not her field. Maybe that was also one reason why they cast her, so that the lead actress would not look all bad, even if she had her terrible moments too like the slapping scene (especially the third and her explanation) and everything about the money that disappeared back then (again, how realistic), especially if the latter as once again more on the bad writing side than bad acting. Massive thumbs-down for this movie. It should not be shown anymore.
Let me give you a few examples: It already starts embarrassingly with the scene at the cemetery and the one woman running there to the other to tell her something. Poor beginning. Not much later, the duo goes clubbing together and there they have an argument that really makes me question (wuth all the mean stuff they said), how we can see them as friends (actually as BFFs, that is what the film wants us to believe) for the rest of the movie and also for a long time before the movie. It just feels very fake. When Knüfken's character comes into play, things are not much better. The story about him looking like the deceased man was intended to be the emotional highlight of the film, but it is just really shoddy and poorly executed. And that makes it even worse because this film does make it very obvious they were taking itself and the plot seriously and there is no comedy in here whatsoever. Simply horrible. There are many other aspects and twists that suck here for sure and if I listed each and every one of these, then I would definitely run into the character limit sooner or later, so I keep it shorter. Another inclusion that must be mentioned though is the one about the guy who has been tricking women out of their money. And his fatherhood. Words cannot express how unrealistic and messy all this was. Sure took a special kind of failure in terms of screenplay here in order to make a story involving a sweet girl like Vilsmaier seem completely out of place. She played the daughter. So yeah it was just a mess. Be it his change in mind when all of a sudden he does not only care about her, but even went to an adoption agency? Yeah right. Talk about rushed. But the perhaps most stupid moment of the entire film (except a really terrible scene involving somebody confessing his love) was when we find out about his sentence. Rushed again the whole trial and what I mean specifically is when the people start applauding there. Or I should say "the women" and I have no idea what this was supposed to mean. Was it all the ones he tricked and they still like him or did he win over a few hearts of lonely women in the audience already? It was just ridiculous. Just like the entire film. And certainly not in a good way. The razzie here (although almost all would have deserved it) goes to the actress who played the protagonist's best friend. I will spare you the name, so she won't be associated with acting through my review because that is clearly not her field. Maybe that was also one reason why they cast her, so that the lead actress would not look all bad, even if she had her terrible moments too like the slapping scene (especially the third and her explanation) and everything about the money that disappeared back then (again, how realistic), especially if the latter as once again more on the bad writing side than bad acting. Massive thumbs-down for this movie. It should not be shown anymore.
