Platicsco
Good story, Not enough for a whole film
Humbersi
The first must-see film of the year.
Kimball
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
"Sonnenallee" is a German 85-minute movie from almost 20 years ago that features some of Germany's biggest rising stars from around that time in Alexander Scheer, Robert Stadlober and Alexander Beyer. They may not be too well-known today anymore, but back then they were. And there are some more established actors on board too, such as Henry Hübchen, Katharina Thalbach and Detlev Buck. It's not really their fault that this film is not working for the most part. There is a touch of "Goodbye Lenin" to it as it depicts life in the GDR of especially younger people, but it's all less refined and does not feel right on many occasions. The writer and director is Leander Haußmann, certainly well-known here in Germany, and I felt at times that he tried to make a mix of stuff like coming-of-age films like "The Breakfast Club", but also included the political context that has been overdone by now in German cinema.And in terms of the genre, nothing new is delivered by this movie here. I cannot say I enjoyed the watch a lot. It was obviously the filmmaker's intention to make almost all the characters likable, but the actors weren't good on several occasions, especially the younger actors and Stadlober in particular, who just isn't very talented. One of the few good things is that the film is fairly short, but it's still disappointing to see a team of so many writers work on a movie and the result is something as forgettable as "Sonnenallee". I cannot agree with all the awards attention that this film got. Haußmann has done better on several other occasions and it's a bit sad that this is probably his most known work to-date. I do not recommend the watch. Thumbs down.
Michael L. (DXtv)
You won't believe it ... but this movie describes my whole sucking youth on the eastern side of the iron curtain! My name is Michael (short Micha), I was just 16 years old when the wall became opened and I lived (and still live) on the eastern side of Berlin :D Yeah! That movie is telling the absolutely truth of my youth and the life of all the other young people in East Berlin - not only them who lived nearby the wall! My western relatives brought (smuggled) some western stuff to the GDR which we couldn't buy on the east side ... except you had some DM (Deutsche Mark /currency of West Germany) ... for that money you had the chance to buy western stuff in some so called "Intershops" on the east side. But because not so many people had hard currencies, the black market was the first and mostly only choice for us to buy western music, western magazines and any other western stuff illegally for a much higher price. For a simple Stones album you had to pay a damn huge price ... up to 200 or 300 Mark (former eastern currency) as far as I remember ... most people in the GDR got up to 800 Mark per month. The already working youth had not much more then 150 Mark per month.Yeah ... that movie is telling the absolutely truth about my live ... well ... up to 90 percent ;o) Watch that movie! DO IT!!! :D
orangesitcom
As an American who lived in former East Germany for a time, I was impressed by the way this film portrayed the ambivalence many Ossis felt about the fall of the Wall. The characters were more nuanced and their treatment more sensitive than that seen in the more popular Goodbye Lenin which, while a good movie, is more about the character's relationship with his mother than it is an accurate portrayal of life in East Germany. Goodbye Lenin seems to reduce the Ossi existence to communist commodification -- to be an Ossi is about what kind of pickles you eat -- whereas Sonnenallee allows its characters to be much more than consumers. In interviews with the makers of Goodbye Lenin, they have mentioned that much of their inspiration for their treatment of East Germans came from TV shows on East Germans.... Sonnenallee presents the eastern life without the extra refraction of the television screen.
bandit-15
'Sonnenallee' is definitly the funniest german pic this year and furthermore a perfectly developed piece of history, that soon will be forgotten trough to the fall of the berlin wall. The biggest plus on Leander Haussmanns film is the cast of no-names, who give so much realism to the flick that you feel thrown back in time without any doubt. And I laughed troughout the whole 90 minutes. Nevertheless will it be difficult for the movie to get real attention outside germany trough to the specific theme, but a must for everyone inside this country.
