A Journalist of Jewish descent in Berlin feels that he is a loser of the political changes in Germany after 1989. When his mother dies, he has to meet his brother to whom he has not talked f... Read allA Journalist of Jewish descent in Berlin feels that he is a loser of the political changes in Germany after 1989. When his mother dies, he has to meet his brother to whom he has not talked for years and to meet all his other family members. But during the preparations for the fun... Read allA Journalist of Jewish descent in Berlin feels that he is a loser of the political changes in Germany after 1989. When his mother dies, he has to meet his brother to whom he has not talked for years and to meet all his other family members. But during the preparations for the funeral he plays a snooker-cup for paying his debts with the money for the victory, and many ... Read all
- Awards
- 8 wins & 10 nominations total
- Janice
- (as Ghada Hammoudah)
- Ukrainer Matzjak
- (as Juri Rosstanlnji)
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Featured reviews
The set up in Alles Auf Zucker has been done many times before, bringing two mismatched parties together in order to reach a common goal. In this case, brothers Jaeckie and Samuel are forced to end their long running feud and strictly follow Jewish customs for 7 days after the funeral of their mother in order to accept her inheritance. The twist being that while Samuel's family live as orthodox Jews, Jaeckie has entirely forgotten his religion. Many of the laughs stem from Jaeckie's wife's last minute crash-course in Jewish culture and Jaeckie's general disinterest.
The film owes a lot of its charm to Henry Huebchen, who plays Jaeckie, and Hannelore Elsner, who plays his wife. Alles Auf Zucker is really built around Huebchen's performance and he is effortlessly convincing as an endearing loser. Elsner, in my opinion the best actress working in Germany at the moment, brings her usual skill and world weary charm to what is really little more than a supporting role. Udo Samel also deserves praise for his turn as Samuel, fleshing out a character that could have been little more than a stereotype in the hands of a lesser actor.
In addition to some fine performances, Alles Auf Zucker is also blessed with a witty script and stylish direction by Dani Levy. These qualities more than make-up for some lazy plotting, such as Samuel's Ecstasy experience, and the unnecessary touches of whimsy that have Jaeckie speak directly to the audience. I think the film could have also done without the creepy inter-cousin romance. Nevertheless, these are minor faults with what is a very funny and charming film.
There are two ways to approach making such a movie. Rely on character comics, but here you need to be quite careful as a movie dealing with Jewish characters risks to be considered as too offensive if they pedal too much on this line. Although a lot of stereotypes are present I did not find them offensive at all (yes, I am Jewish), actually it's more the gay and sexual allusions that some may find more visible and doubt there good taste. The other approach would be to deal more with the political theme, but here the film is just a pale social commentary, and it never gets even close to the subtlety and human dimension of a film like 'Good-bye, Lenin'.
Unfortunately by choosing the middle of the road the director condemned the film to mediocrity, and instead of good laughs it's mostly polite smiles all along. It's not that good comedy scenes are completely missing, but I could not escape the feeling that the premises of the movie are better than the outcome, and that if the authors had chosen a more definite line, or just dared to be more crazy the result would have been better.
This film might not be 100% brilliant, but it's funny, it's very good and worth its while and money. Originally made only for Arte TV, they decided to get it into cinema first. And what a great idea this was! Hopefully more films like this will follow, so that we all can go another step on the way back to normal. Because it is normal to see black German characters, Turkish-German characters and Jewish German characters and what else in films and series and plays. So, writers, sit yourself down and write. Directors and producers are hopefully waiting for good scripts! They better be...
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
- Language
- Also known as
- Go for Zucker
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $87,490
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $2,130
- Dec 11, 2005
- Gross worldwide
- $8,466,803
- Runtime
- 1h 35m(95 min)
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1