"Metalfarm" is a German television movie from 2017, so not too old, but also not really fresh anymore. Perhaps it already had its fifth anniversary when you read this review if you are here a few years from now. Like most other small screen stuff from my country, it runs for 1.5 hours. By the way, the alternate title here is "Ein Dorf rockt ab" and this is also the one they were going for today when I watched this film, so perhaps the more common title. The director is Holger Haase and writer is Stefan Kuhlmann. There is not too much to say about these two. They are quite experienced, but if you take a look at both their bodies of work, it does not even have to be a closer look, you will see immediately that there is no quality attached to them. Co-writer Katharina (or Kati) Eyssen is more interesting. She was a prolific actress in fact before she basically changed professions and focused on screenplays. Also I would say that what she wrote in the past is not as weak as what the two men I just mentioned came up with. Good for her. It's not great either though. Now, let us focus a bit on this film here. Or first of all on the cast. The key players and also some of the supporting actors are all fairly experienced actors. Usually, even if the script is bad, those television films are profitable enough to cash in for experienced cast members and not really a way for rookies to get going in the industry. The most known cast member here by far is Hannes Jaenicke. He has solid charisma and decent screen presence in everything he is in and that frequently hides the fact that he may not have a lot of range and usually plays very similar characters as a consequence. Characters whose only real difference is that they have different professions/backgrounds. Jaenicke is frequently a love interest for the female protagonist in these films because there is always a certain masculinity to his character, but here for once he is not involved romantically with the female main character. He turned 60 this year, so back in 2017 when this was made he was probably 57, even if he does look younger admittedly, but really maybe by now he is too old for the lover roles. Lead actress is Christina Große. She does not have a photo here on imdb and that fits very well together with the fact that she is not as known as lead actors and actresses usually are in this kind of movies. I guess they used most of the cast money on Jaenicke this time. Still, she is far from a rookie and honestly, she does not make the script worse than it already is, which is okay. Gotta think small here. Her man is played by Roman Knizka. Same can be said about him. A prolific actor,one you have maybe seen in other projects already if you like German films, but not a star, not even a small star and honestly his character and performance felt really not crucial at all taking into account he played the second or third biggest role. Rest of the cast list you can check for yourself. Zirner sounds familiar, not August, Jeremy Mockridge related to Luke? Many people with familiar names here, but not the famous ones. Daniel Zillmann is also always very easy to identify because of his looks, but he plays a true nothing character this time.
Now as for the story, you can maybe already guess from the title and photo here on imdb what this is about, namely a culture clash if you wannt to call it that. We have a farmer who is struggling hard financially and her only chance at paying the bills before she loses everything is agreeing that a heavy metal concert may take place next to her home. Which means things can get very dirty, very loud and very emmm. metallic? Of course, the other villagers strongly oppose the idea and initially, the main character is also not happy about it at all. But then, in a pseudo-important tolerance plot, she realizes that these metal folks are not bad at all and that behind their rough looks, there are honest hearts. It felt pretty fake to me I must say the way it was written. This is the key story. A great deal of romance drama is included too. The main character's teenage daughter falls for a young metal guy (obviously!) and does all she can to impress him and surely ma is not happy at all when the girl is about to get a piercing. And as if the mother (the central character) does not have enough to do already with dealing with the potential concert and her resisting daughter, she also struggles with her own marriage as another woman comes into play, who seemingly has a romantic interest in the husband. Of course, it always has to be the husband who is in danger of being unfaithful and who is a liability to the marriage. So sexist these films frequently. But yeah, Superma puts her in her place eventually. And the husband comes back and does all he can to make sure his wife understands she is a queen. At the very end, the concert takes place (as if there had been any doubt) and is a huge success and everybody is having a great time. These films almost always have happy endings. This one is no exception. Sadly, these happy ending seem almost always fake and for the sake of it and there, this film is also no exception. So a pretty bad movie from beginning to end, even if I would not say it is 100% failure, maybe 90%, compared to other stuff shown in Germany in the afternoon, especially the absolutely horrible Degeto/Ziegler production. These are ARD, this one here is ZDF, but that does not make it much better. Okay, two more examples why this film sucks now: 1. The attention to detail is almost never there and when they are trying to give depth to the characters it goes very wrong, about as wrong as you can witness when the idea is presented that Jaenicke's character was actually a teacher. The second example is when we have the scene with the son towards the end, who all of a sudden also loves heavy metal and headbangs and his mother and sister join in. Utter cringe. A terrible child performance in that scene that makes the already very poor writing even far worse. Enough said. This film gets a big thumbs-down from me. Highly not recommended and I am 100% sure that actual heavy metal fans would not enjoy it either, but be embarrassed by how their style and music are presented here and this film, as I hinted at in the title of my review, does not united metal fans and normal people, but makes the gap even bigger. So it never should have been made. And never should be shown anymore either, but I have a bad feeling people will still be "lucky" enough to watch this on national television more than ten years from now. Guys, this is where your GEZ payments go. Awesome!
Now as for the story, you can maybe already guess from the title and photo here on imdb what this is about, namely a culture clash if you wannt to call it that. We have a farmer who is struggling hard financially and her only chance at paying the bills before she loses everything is agreeing that a heavy metal concert may take place next to her home. Which means things can get very dirty, very loud and very emmm. metallic? Of course, the other villagers strongly oppose the idea and initially, the main character is also not happy about it at all. But then, in a pseudo-important tolerance plot, she realizes that these metal folks are not bad at all and that behind their rough looks, there are honest hearts. It felt pretty fake to me I must say the way it was written. This is the key story. A great deal of romance drama is included too. The main character's teenage daughter falls for a young metal guy (obviously!) and does all she can to impress him and surely ma is not happy at all when the girl is about to get a piercing. And as if the mother (the central character) does not have enough to do already with dealing with the potential concert and her resisting daughter, she also struggles with her own marriage as another woman comes into play, who seemingly has a romantic interest in the husband. Of course, it always has to be the husband who is in danger of being unfaithful and who is a liability to the marriage. So sexist these films frequently. But yeah, Superma puts her in her place eventually. And the husband comes back and does all he can to make sure his wife understands she is a queen. At the very end, the concert takes place (as if there had been any doubt) and is a huge success and everybody is having a great time. These films almost always have happy endings. This one is no exception. Sadly, these happy ending seem almost always fake and for the sake of it and there, this film is also no exception. So a pretty bad movie from beginning to end, even if I would not say it is 100% failure, maybe 90%, compared to other stuff shown in Germany in the afternoon, especially the absolutely horrible Degeto/Ziegler production. These are ARD, this one here is ZDF, but that does not make it much better. Okay, two more examples why this film sucks now: 1. The attention to detail is almost never there and when they are trying to give depth to the characters it goes very wrong, about as wrong as you can witness when the idea is presented that Jaenicke's character was actually a teacher. The second example is when we have the scene with the son towards the end, who all of a sudden also loves heavy metal and headbangs and his mother and sister join in. Utter cringe. A terrible child performance in that scene that makes the already very poor writing even far worse. Enough said. This film gets a big thumbs-down from me. Highly not recommended and I am 100% sure that actual heavy metal fans would not enjoy it either, but be embarrassed by how their style and music are presented here and this film, as I hinted at in the title of my review, does not united metal fans and normal people, but makes the gap even bigger. So it never should have been made. And never should be shown anymore either, but I have a bad feeling people will still be "lucky" enough to watch this on national television more than ten years from now. Guys, this is where your GEZ payments go. Awesome!
