Fack ju Göhte 2 (2015) Reviews

• An inferior sequel to an already mediocre first film

  Horst_In_Translation2015-09-16

  As you probably already guessed correctly from the title, this is the sequel to the super-successful "Fack ju Göhte" from 2 years ago. And looking at audience numbers, it seems that this one could become as much of a hit. The cast includes the core players from the first film, especially M'Barek, Herfurth, Flint and Haase, who basically carry this almost 2-hour film. It is a comedy mostly, but there are some dramatic parts included too here and there. These involve child labor, drug production, Asperger's, neglectful parents, identity crises, crushes on teachers etc. So actually, there's quite a lot. The writer and director is Bora Dagtekin again. He has worked so much with M'Barek in the past. This time it's about a travel as the main character Zeki and some of his class members fly to Thailand. The good thing is that they did not include generic love story troubles between Zeki and Lisi, which was good. However, they made errors in many other areas in exchange. The main problem is exactly the dramatic aspects I just mentioned. These were not well-constructed at all I must say and seemed just thrown in randomly to give this film some more relevance. Pretty disappointing. It would have been okay if they had taken 1 or 2 and elaborated profoundly on these, but nope. This sequel works best when it is 100% comedy. The scenes with Uschi Glas were pretty hilarious and Katja Riemann's last scene with our two protagonists was fine too. This was more due to the writing though than to Riemann giving a convincing performance. The possibly biggest revelation here was Jella Haase once again who truly made this character her own and with the way how crass she was it could certainly have become annoying or repetitive at some point, but it did not. Unfortunately, I have to criticize the writing in other places again. All in all, this film lacked realism. There were just too many laughable coincidences in here and it was also predictable. Of course, he would stay a teacher, even with the embarrassing identity crisis they included. And of course would Haase's character and the Asperger boy make a connection somewhat. At least they did not fall in love, but maybe we have to watch this in a third movie. I am fairly certain they will make one at some point with how big of a commercial success this one here turned out. All in all, I was not really impressed. Some scenes were funny, but in the light of two hours it just wasn't worth the watch I must admit. Not recommended.

• Let him make a Robinson-movie already!

  Karl Self2015-09-12

  Somebody please give director Bora Dagtekin carte blanche to shoot in Thailand! This is already the second time that he has taken a successful franchise out of Germany to an exotic paradise island in the sun. This worked very well with "Türkisch für Anfänger". In Fack ju Göhte 2 it's more a chance for the cast and crew to work on their tans than anything. In order to give the expensive location at least some justification, there is a bizarre subplot of orphans of the 2004 tsunami catastrophe who are destitute, have access to jetskis and are lead by an Austrian waif. Zeki, the coolest teacher ever since Robin Williams climbed onto a table, induces them to dive for diamonds with free McDonald's vouchers, and yes, there is a general abundance of inane script writing as well as product placement. Luckily, there is also an abundance of witty exchanges between Zeki and his chav wards. I didn't care about the location, and, although I didn't expect Doctor Shivago, I would have liked to see a better, more grounded plot. The running time of almost two hours is excessive and the story runs paper thin at times. But I have to admit that I had myself a laugh. PS: I just watched it for a second time. Basically, a fun movie until the gang of Tsunami orphans comes into play. Also, a lot of the scenes are copy-pasted from Hangover II.

• Okay sequel

  Elwood_Blues2015-09-18

  This film tries very hard to top the first one in humor and scope. Some of the jokes work very well and are on the same level as in the original film (the chili condom, the river scene). Volker Bruch's performance as Hauke is brilliant. However, in my opinion the film falls flat for a variety of reasons. For the most part the kind of humor has changed from a clever mix of stupidity/slapstick/wit/gutter language to two hours of hearing Chantal talk. The reasoning behind this is understandable because the character was one of the highlights of the first film. But this is too much. In contrast, characters which were highlights in the first film only appear in better cameos (e.g. Palaske's Charly) in this film. The length of the movie is another issue. There are some dramatic elements in the film (the orphans) which in my opinion just don't work and simply drag on the movie. Deleting them would have sped up the film considerably. Another example for something that should have been cut is the last scene with M'Barek in the vending machine. While a similar scene in the first film was a highlight, this scene is just completely redundant. There were also some technical issues which were distracting. First, the editing of the first minutes is very fast paced which does not fit for what is happening. Then, the score did not fit either for some scenes (e.g. fast paced/"action" music for quieter scenes). And last but not least, the explosion of the boat was one the worst VFX shots I have seen in a long time (in a theatrical film). This almost felt like something from a cheap C-movie. All in all, I had some laughs, but the film is not on the same level as the first film.

• Not funny at all

  a-holzhammer2018-04-01

  The fact that this movie was big here in Germany explains perfectly why there are so few good ones coming from here. I love silly humor, but this movie's humor is so low-level, wow... the story is not only foreseeable (which you'd expect from a movie like that), it's also completely bananas, full of stereotypes and flat as hell. The characters are hardly describable as one-dimensional, because I don't know if you can call one single character treat per part a dimension. Don't watch it, you're gonna be very unsatisfied.

• Less coherent, "more" funny

  kosmasp2016-09-11

  There's almost no story to actually talk about in this. And there are quite a few bumps along the road, that make the ride feel wrong. And still if you do watch this with friends, you probably will have a good time with all the nonsense that is going on. I know we had, even though we knew all along how bad this was. So I'm rating more the experience itself than the movie itself. You either like that very low level humor or are immediately appalled by it. Sometimes you just have to be open to something to just receive it and enjoy it for what it is. Otherwise take 4 or 5 points of off my rating and do not watch it at all.