Late Show

"Late Show" is not the piece of art that "Rossini", Dietl's last movie, was. But I'm not sure if we should feel sorry about this. Maybe a topic like cable-TV deserves to be treated in this loud and aggressive way. This is "Kalkhofes Mattscheibe" for the big screen. But although LS is not a masterpiece, it's funny and its satirical arrows mostly hit the point. It's good comedy treating more than relationships, something seldom produced by German moviemakers.

The acting is surprisingly good. Even Gottschalk manages it this time, although it is no challenge to play oneself. The real discovery of this movie is Harald Schmidt if you consider that overacting was the task given to him. Note: If you hate Schmidt, don't watch this movie, but it's a must for everyone who misses "Schmidteinander". Minor roles were casted and played well, especially Pfaff was superb, transporting a sad and desperate tone into the film. Yasmin Tabatabai presents the evilest looking make-up in a movie I've ever seen. Oh- and a law should maybe be passed that hinders directors from casting their girlfriends.

After all, together with "23" a good start into '99 for German cinema.

PS. Enjoy the opening critics, but don't try to read them.

Surprisingly good film, which in retrospect turns out to be the third part of a tetralogy devised by Helmut Dietl about the German / German-speaking media society.

"Schtonk" (1992) was about the Hamburg-based print media (especially STERN, of course), "Rossini" (1997) was about the Munich-based film industry (Constantin Film), "Late Show" (1999 ) is of course about the depraved private television (RTL) in beautiful Cologne and with "Zettl" (2012) we then went to Berlin, the center of power. Of course, the dialectal colors that can be heard everywhere also fit. All four areas, all four cities mentioned, functioned as melting pots of the German-speaking area, in which Dietl can celebrate a swan song for the cultural industries of the old Federal Republic style.

The film "Late Show" was of course made in the 1990s, a time marked by decisive upheavals. On the one hand, there is a spirit of optimism (remember the euphoric founding of new television channels such as VOX, n-tv and VIVA in the first half of the decade), and on the other, bitter disillusionment as more and more flat-headed people like Beckmann, Kerner and Pilawa emerge as new television stars (, some of which still shape the television business today!!!) and gave a devastating testimony to the further development of the medium of television. One also remembers the events of 2004, when Rudi Carrell almost single-handedly destroyed EUROVISION hostess Anke Engelke's late night show via an interview because, as a woman, she supposedly couldn't handle such a show. So Dietl definitely knows what he is saying here.

Dietl's quotes from German film history are also well done: the Heimatfilm, Fassbinder and the lying soft-focus images (especially in the horse scenes with Veronica Ferres) in the "Emmanuelle" imitators always send greetings. There is more to this film than anyone was prepared to see at the time. It is a lost world that is portrayed here. In 1999, when the film came out, it was still very much alive. Social media like Facebook and You Tube still had their meteoric rise ahead of them. Unfortunately, ACADEMY AWARD nominee Helmut DIETL was no longer able to make his own film about it.

You should definitely give this film a second viewing, there might be surprising insights!

For a German comedy. German comedies are almost non-existent. Dietl is one of the exceptional directors for this stuff. Well, so and so. I can imagine that anyone from outside of Germany won't find this one very funny; though someone who is acquainted with the main actors could. Gottschalk is a lousy actor, but here he just has to play himself, and that's very much okay. The second hero, Harald Schmidt, has been a successful copy of any late night Leno or Letterman on German TV. Veronika Ferres is one of the worst actors in Germany, and even that fits in this movie: she IS a bad actress. Foreign people would enjoy a former well-known comedian from Cologne being the doctor who give him a jab of morphine to sleep for around 12 hours, and in any dubbing, the southern, alpine, accent of the money man wouldn't work.

I can imagine that the whole lot comes across as a 5, or maximum of 6/10 for the uninitiated foreign viewer. And it could creep up to maybe even 10/10 for those who know Cologne, German private TV business and especially the heroes. Meaning, I could enjoy almost the whole lot simply by being able to understand the self-irony. The I-don't-take-myself-any-serious-in-this-plot attitude of those who kind of play themselves, and the daily fights in their original, similar, positions.

Helmut Dietls satire places Halrald Schmidt at the front of biting black humor. Furthermore, I found Jasmine Tabatabai worth mentioning as a victim of higher forces. Altogether successful, although unfortunately a somewhat weak ending - nevertheless recommended, provided one likes H. Schmidt!

Maybe I'm biased. I have to confess that I have severe problems to like homegrown movies (especially those German films they used to call "comedies"). But with Helmut Dietl directing I thought it at least possible that "Late Night" could prove to be an interesting film. It didn't. So what went wrong? I expected a biting satire about all those idiotic television programs that continue to overflow our everyday life and the people that "create" them. Obviously, there are great possibilities in that concept. Dietl tried to make this kind of satire, but he tried too hard. "Late Night" is a satire without laughs. The screenplay contains too many things that won't work (most of all the plot). As usual with German comedies, the film is mainly dialogue-driven, while visual gags do not exist or are clumsily executed. Only two or three gags really work. The directing is not up to Dietls usual standard. But the biggest problem is that this is a comedy about television, that was co-produced by a television station, that is cast with popular show masters and that looks most of the time like a TV-movie. I wonder what the people involved in this production wanted to say about television - that everybody makes **** instead of them? After viewing this movie, I am afraid that this is not true.