Shoppen

This feels like a feature-lenght treatment of a comedy-routine that could have also been told in a ten-minute short. Also, technical credits are sup-par. The film really feels like a film school diploma project.

The cast is a mix of seasoned stage pros and talented newcomers but the problems is the superficial scrip. Their lines feel constructed, exactly like cued TV show material.

The director fails to take his protagonists seriously, therefore we are not touched by their problems and conflicts.

The film has been cleverly marketed and offers a unique selling point, but in the end the film disappoints on all levels.

Not finding the right words is everybody's problem in this vaudeville-type urban comedy. They don't know what to say, and they don't know how to say it, which is why they embark on the potentially humiliating enterprise of pre-arranged speed dating. Unfortunately, they all come across as cardboard characters rather than real people. The story follows a conventional three-act structure: getting to know the sizable cast in their sorry single lives, the actual dating circuit, and a final stretch of romantic fallout, showcasing some of the new-found couples' follies. Because it's all so predictable, I'd say that as a narrative, "Shoppen" is a failure. As a comedy, most of the time it's too goofy to be really funny. Thumbs up to Kathrin von Steinburg. She stands out from the soap opera crowd as the aloof, independently wealthy Miriam. Great makeup on her too (Verena Weißert): Heavy eye shadow meets skin-tone lip gloss, creating a brooding and bohemian, yet girlish effect. Thumbs up also to Stefan Zinner as the Bavarian love machine and Tanja Schleiff as the hot nutritionist. They bypass the communication challenge by way of the timeless body language of copulation.

I've just seen this movie in a preview and I can only recommend to watch it. It was about 90 minutes long and when it was over I felt like it could go on for hours. The stories of the protagonists are so realistic and you feel really at home. The movie basically consists of dialogs but I wasn't bored a minute. 18 people of really different characters and each one of them acted out so well. I had to laugh, felt awkward, was sad and still felt happiness. All in all it is a movie that shows the different kinds of people in our society, the way they communicate and how love has changed and nowadays is handled as an economic thing. Dating becomes something that is similar to an audition. The whole audience loved it. So please watch it if there's a possibility. You'll love it!

Well, I have to admit that this movie brought some occasional laughs to my face. OK, but that does not make it a good movie. Most of the characters are terrible stereotypes and truly unconvincing. Not all of them give great acting performances, but some really try, but fail because their characters are badly written. The perfect example is Julia Koschitz: She changes her eating habits from one talk to the other, on one talk she does not drink alcohol on the next she is allergic to champagne, she feels too beautiful for most people (in fact she is) but still ends up with the "perfect" fit concerning the looks, and refuses to give some more "realistic" guys a chance, and so on... The end is very cheesy, although I like one of the final scenes, when everybody finally stops talking and the director gives us a chance to catch our breath again. Shoppen is basically a movie that offers some cheap laughters (mostly because it is about sex and relationships, I assume) and maybe some short entertainment. Still, the whole picture is one big stereotype and nothing is really special about it.

In complete contrast to the previous correspondent here, I thought Shoppen Munich (as it was billed when shown with English subtitles here in London at the German Film Festival in November 2007) was very funny, very well acted, and excellently scripted.

It's quite audacious to design a 100-minute film that consists exclusively, and relentlessly, of talking heads. But I think Ralf Westhoff succeeded with wit and élan. No standard filmic devices of, say, following a character's soul-baring pronouncement with some meditative minor-seventh-chord music and long-shot nature cutaways. But when someone said something that revealed their souls - well, we were hustled on by the man with the timer for yet another superficial introduction. Which is, of course, the point: the hurtling tickbox superficiality of thirtysomething urbanites, where everything is down to a quick question and answer.

Maybe most films are so clichéd and stupid that we English are ready to laugh at any vaguely intelligent and uncontrived cinema, but I can promise you that at the screening tonight (Curzon Cinema, Sun 25 Nov 2007) the full audience bellowed with laughter most of the way through. So I wasn't the only one guffawing!

My girlfriend (who speaks German and has lived in Munich) thought it was hilarious. I (who don't speak German and have not been to Munich, I think) thought it was hilarious. I'd recommend Shoppen (Munich) to anyone (especially couples...) looking for a smart, witty, original, wise film about the superficiality of modern relationships and the bewilderment of the generation who feel they've missed out on the happy-ever-after stuff first time round.

NB In the English subtitled showing in London, the subtitles (which were very good) were shown completely underneath the slightly reduced picture, not inside it. I thought this was a Good Thing.