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Who doesn't like intelligent allusions? Well, when it reaches 10 allusions in 3 seconds it becomes painful. Loriot had all the time in the world to write the script, but you are supposed to decode it in real time? The film is like a textbook in mathematics. I mean, there were actually plans to set areas under water at the time, I even know a precise case this seemingly boring sexual joke refers to, the Schnackenmoor, where I liked to ride my bicycle until they created a pond there, put some park benches in front of it, where you can listen to the birds that must be there somewhere, hidden from view, and called the whole thing a bog. And so it goes with everything the film dishes out, either you constantly hit pause or you surrender, simply call the whole thing silly and tell yourself that there's no way all of that means something, but of course, every time you stop to think about it, it actually does.

By the way, the Schnackenmoor is in Hamburg, Germany, and although Loriot's dialect points towards Berlin, his two films are so obviously set in Hamburg that that alone is painful enough. He was quite similar to John Cleese in his humor, really, but whereas John Cleese mocks the British for being stiff, because they're afraid of the aristocracy, Vicco von Bülow (i.e. Loriot), an aristocrat himself, mocks Hamburg's well to do for being stiff, because they are too unsophisticated to successfully emulate royalty. By the way, Katherina Schell von Bauschlott (On Her Majesty's Secret Service, The Return of the Pink Panther) is sophisticated enough, if you want to understand Loriot's frustration.

There's one gag here, the hair cutter, I don't know whether Loriot stole it from the Sledge Hammer episode Sledgepoo, or whether great minds think alike, but I saw it coming, independently of that, and it is very typical really: Some stupid sexual innuendo for the parents and an absolutely wickedly clever gag for the kids who can take in all the details. Both as a script writer and in his role as Paul Winkelmann Loriot revels in his second childhood, that is acting like a boy of 6 with the life experience of a 60 year old, when he proposes to give Evelyn Hamann 10% for her co-operation, he expresses the pride of an entire city in its mercantile education. Usually, when you ask somebody, if you can get some percent off, when you pay in cash, they just say no, but in Hamburg they usually say: I'm so glad I found somebody who understands the business model of credit card companies! Of course!

Ah well, I think this should give pretty much everybody on this planet an idea, what this film is like. Loriot is dearly missed, the Federal Republic of Germany losing him is like the German Empire losing Bismarck.

The first part is markedly better, because it.covers more.themes. The second part is one long war against the Harkonnens. Villeneuve has.changed some things again and this time more purposefully, for instance Harkonnen warfare to make it more like US warfare. I was pondering, whether Feyd-Rautha's attempt on his uncle's life via the sex slave he prepared with a poison spike even could have been a part of this film and came away with a negative answer, because his uncle just isn't shown as a real human being at all. As expected, the sex orgy while Jessica transmutes the water of life has been omitted as well, but not just because you can't legally show 13 year olds participating in such events, but also because Villeneuve is keen to portray the Fremen as French muslims.

Speeking of which, I had some political reservations about the first part, because I didn't know where it was going. It is very obvious where the second part is, namely towards an entirely mainstream consensus that it is important to fight cruel exploitation, but that religious zealotry is also dangerous. Frank Herbert thought that libertarianism could unite humanity and Villeneuve has tweaked this message some to become that French style humanism can achieve the feat.

But what matters is that you have to sit through 3 hours of.sword fights. By the way, by introducing all kinds of new weapons, the fighting doesn't really make much military sense any more. It degrades to a 6 year old playing with masters of the universe dolls. I mean, you sit there thinking: "Ok, we know they live in these rocks and we can blow them up. In the south there are also rocks. Let's blow some up and see who comes out." That's not good when the film is all about war. The only thing that can save it then are military considerations.

It appears that Villeneuve intends to go on. There are a number of Dune novels and if Villeneuve turns each into two films he's got way to go. But it will be boring. Sorry, it will be boring. By adapting Herbert's message to our time, he has to discard all of Herbert's little propositions and without them the material is boring. He can't come up with any of his own that are equally intriguing. He understands what Herbert is doing, but that doesn't mean that he can masterfully transpose it. He tried in the first part with the story of an animal chewing its leg off in order to escape. But sorry, so only irrational animals would escape a reasonable government with reasonable limitations on freedom, fine, that's the traditional Roman Empire, Catholic Church, French point of view, but it is not entertaining, whereas Herbert's "pain is an opinion" point of view is, no matter of its civilizational merit - it's really "be a good citizen" versus "cowboy and Indians". Villeneuve won't be able to turn this into anything worth the while.

Why show one tame lion up close when you can show 20 jumping at you in your living room?

Mr. Marshall surely isn't impressing any lions with this, but people, that is another story.

This is over the top exhibitionist, but then again, what is celluloid for?

So we excuse all the somewhat repetitive humor: "You crazy man, lions dangerous." and shock "Lions, lions everywhere in our house!"

After all, you also pay money to visit the circus and there aren't many that show a program like this one.

Well, that should suffice, there isn't really that much to write about this film. As the credits say: The cats wrote the script. And they liked... sinking boats, the tigers that is, riding in the back of a car, again the tigers, and playing with boxes that contain humans, the lions.