Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Wer früher stirbt ist länger tot" or "Grave Decisions" is a German 100-minute movie from almost 10 years ago. It is the first full feature film by Marcus H. Rosenmüller and also his most famous work to this day. In the center of it, we have an 11-year-old boy whose mother died when he was born. As a consequence of this, he blames himself and tries to find out if he is really responsible for killing people. This sounds pretty serious, but this film is really more of a (sometimes dark) comedy than a drama movie. Rosenmüller included many funny scenes to make this a lighter watch I guess, but in my opinion it is not working, because the comedy in here feels forced from start to finish, just like I said to make this a lighter watch. But it almost never feels authentic or genuinely funny. One of the worst scenes is probably when we see and hear the protagonist at the supermarket. For no real reason, he confesses also his other sins and his dad completely out of nowhere starts attacking another guy who was just standing around, a complete stranger. This also worked against the intention of the filmmakers to make the father look likable from start to finish.Sometimes this film also has love story elements when the boy's dad falls in love with his son's teacher. Unfortunately, none of their scenes have any real emotion attached to them, but are just poor flesh lust and strange meetings during nighttime. Of course, right at this meeting they get caught by the children. And still we are supposed to believe this is true love, in contrast to the marriage that the teacher has been in for a while. Some very weird scenes in here. The film's biggest weakness is probably the writing. It's a usual case of black-and-white character with little depth and no shades at all. Do not be fooled by this film's high IMDb rating or all the awards attention it got, came in second behind "Four Minutes" at the German Film Awards that year. This is not a good film at all, neither funny nor dramatically convincing. if you still want to watch it, you may even need a set of subtitles as a German native speaker as the Bavarian accents in here are very thick. But why would you? You''re not missing much. Not recommended.

p.newhouse@talk21.com This is a very funny yet touching comic drama about the weirdness of everyday life. Set in a small Bavarian community, it looks at the relationships within a dysfunctional all-male family. 11 year old Sebastian, known locally as der Chandler-bub (the baby of the Candler pub), is a lovable rascal, but his older brother blames him for their mother's death. Sebastian sets about trying to remedy the loss of his mother, because his guilt for this supposed crime, as well as other misdemeanors (watch out for a hilarious medieval courtroom dream sequence) weighs heavily with him. Markus Krojer lends the role of Sebastian a tremendous amount of warmth and believability. The rest of the cast are also excellent, with finely judged performances. Watch out for a delightful laundry scene involving Sebastian's father. The one real detraction is that I have not been able to get hold of a copy with English subtitles. My German is good, but this film is in Baiirish (Bavarian dialect), with High German subtitles. Copies with English subtitles are very rare.

liderc Well, another German comedy ... This time, it's even a Bavarian comedy, obviously a high budget production (the photography is surprisingly good) ... But it falls in the same trap of the mindset some Bavarians really seem to like: Speaking strong Bavarian accent is so great and so big fun, especially if it is combined with simple-mindedness and and ruthless manners. Therefore we have in this movie silly sex jokes ("Can I sleep with you?" asks the little boy his female teacher), lurid depictions of butchered pigs and killed rabbits and stupid dialogues like the father's use of the phrase "Get lost" as a loving greeting for his son, or the little boy's naive question "Können Sie Leviten lesen?" (sorry, this one can't be translated). Of course, life in small Bavarian villages is here shown to be oh so great and oh so happy ... Yeah, right, because it is so wonderfully simple-minded ... If the script would have treated this kind of life with irony, this could have been a great movie, but being what it is it is just yet another simple-minded German comedy. Besides, the nude scene of the leading Austrian actor was hilariously bad. But still, some jokes are nice and there is a funny cameo by Konstantin Wecker, therefore the three points.

tdrewes Hi,I rented this movie to have some light hearted, funny entertainment. But to be honest - we hadn't.First of all: Coming from north German descent and thus not too familiar with the Bavarian dialect we enabled subtitles after the first 10 minutes. But I could have lived with that without problems if the movie would have been funny. But it wasn't. The first 50 minutes had two or three chuckles for me but the rest was merely boredom. I don't know really why I couldn't connect to this movie but I wonder if the reception of this movie is a regional thing. I liked for example 'Karniggels (1991)', because I could connect to it not only from the regional point of view. But this one here for me is a mostly badly crafted, not really funny comedy.