REVIEW: Toni Erdmann

Toni Erdmann (dir. Maren Ade, 2016)
***

Toni Erdmann is a story of a man called Winfried who wants to get closer to his thriving adult daughter. When his dog dies, this old man just pops to Bucharest where Ines is working for an oil company. In the process of taking care of his daughter in his own unique way, Winfried creates an alter ego called Toni Erdmann. Things get weird and very funny.

This movie has a lot of hype around it, it won FIPRESCI Award in Cannes and the way it has been talked about made me think this was going to be something truly fresh and enjoyable.

For my surprise, the movie didn't live up with the expectations. The film is crazy long and for the first part I found myself staring at the screen and feeling like I had already seen this film. It was dragging along with handheld camera - I do not like handheld camera for just the sake of it. Very few movies have the justification in the plot/atmosphere to use it so it almost never looks good.

When alter ego Toni Erdmann comes into picture, the pace gets a bit better, but in the end, there was just so much footage that should have been left behind. Kill your darlings. Please.

Main problem was that the aim for this movie was to be not just comedy but also a drama. If they would have had focus on what they did the best, it would have been a fresh watch and I would have cared more about the characters. Instead, they tried to build deeper into father-daughter communication; and I couldn't find anything new in their way of picturing it. There wasn't enough change in the characters to stay interested for almost three hours and other themes that were slightly touched passed by and I wanted to scream after them "that was something I would have loved to see more about!"

Toni Erdmann is a good movie but for that length, I truly think the movie should have more in it. More of anything.