stjopex This is a great story about society today depicted through a (bohemistic) father-(corporate) daughter relationship. There are couple of memorable scenes which made me bitter laugh out loud. Singing Whitney Houston and an absolute climax at the naked party are some of the best scenes ever. Movie has this Lost In Translation atmosphere where the city of Bucharest is both a medium through which characters interacte and a catalyzer of awkward situations. The film questions family relationships (father senses that life his daughter lives isn't fulfilling), corporate world, cultural and language differences, and above all, society as a whole ("...people are strange when you're a stranger..."). Fantastic acting, smart use of real life people which sometimes feels like Borat and brilliant writing. Thumbs up!

proud_luddite Ines Conradi (Sandra Huller) is a young German globalist consultant living in Bucharest, Romania. Her job is to assist large corporations to outsource jobs and reduce their labour costs. Winfried (Peter Simonischek) is Ines' father who is near retirement and concerned about how distant and workaholic his daughter has become. To relieve his distress, he "visits" her in Bucharest and plays pranks by showing up at Ines' business functions dressed in a bizarre wig and claiming to be "Toni Erdmann, life coach"."Toni Erdmann" is yet another film where I liked the first half better than the second. The beginning section has many genuine moments of social awkwardness and it is candid about our modern times as it exposes the foils of workaholism and the deviousness of globalization. In a few scenes, director/writer Maren Ade cleverly juxtaposes the wealth of the globalist foreigners with the poor living circumstances of average Romanians. One scene amazes in showing how the poor can still be generous despite their circumstances.The latter half is filled with buffoonery with occasional laughs (a bizarre birthday brunch was the highlight) but some of the comedy seems silly and inconsistent with the rest of the story. For example, how could "Toni" have shown up at Ines' after-work events before she does without any indication she told him where she was going to be?Huller gives a fine performance of a complex, inner-conflicted character. She portrays what could be called a villain: a despised, modern archetype - someone who advances her/his own career while casually destroying the livelihoods of others who are less well-off. Yet, she manages, with the help of Ade, to humanize the role without being apologetic for the career choice. The universal theme of "lost childhood" is also well portrayed here in Ines' relationship with Winfried. We get glimpses that she used to be as prankish with him in her early years.Overall, "Toni Erdmann" is a good film despite its flaws and its excessive length. Like the recent "Moonlight", it is a highly acclaimed film that, for me, reaches much of its potential but not all of it.

Evan Ok, the acting is decent -- supposing you want to watch a movie with completely mundane, utterly banal and unlikeable characters. It's like watching a movie that's focused entirely on the boss from Office Space. The female lead is cold, unlikable, boring, and does not change even to the end of the film. The dad is an utter weirdo and I'm not sure-are we supposed to sympathize with him in some way? He's a creepy loser and none of his jokes are even remotely on point. The only thing I agreed with the female lead is that her dad is a complete deadbeat.That's fine, having lead characters that are boring and unlikable, but the movie drags on and on and on and on. The scenes are incredibly long cuts and serve more to make you squirm in your seat with discomfort, or fall asleep from boredom. It took me 3 tries to finish the film. My wife walked out the first time after the first hour, and I stopped it too because it sucked, even though we had high hopes. It is ABSOLUTELY not a comedy in any way. It is a drama, but not a very good drama. There's kind of a rule of thumb in writing: is this the most interesting part of your character's life? If not, then why don't you write about -that part- of their life and not this part?

lor_ This acclaimed movie, one of innumerable Sony Classics pick-ups and releases from the film festival circuit, annoyed me more than any other movie I've seen in the past 40-plus years. Early in the tortuous nearly 3-hour sitting, the memory of suffering through Peter Sellers & Ringo Starr in "The Magic Christian" all the way back in 1970 was the only comparable experience.What these two films have in common is a know-it-all attitude on the part of the auteur (Ms. Maren Ade for "Toni" while Terry Southern authored "Magic Christian", directed by British journeyman hack Joe McGrath), providing enough satire of our modern society to cause the cognoscenti who make up the ranks of film critics & festival programmers to chuckle. I wasn't chuckling, but endlessly groaning.In fact, Peter Simonischek's "embarrassing prankster daddy" performance reminded me not of one of Sellers' over-the-top characters but rather a generic adaptation of Jerry Lewis's various horrible novelty dentures mockery of "guys with funny teeth". Like Mickey Rooney's Japanese stereotype role in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (perhaps Blake Edwards' only misstep in that classic production), we can now cringe at these poor choices by great comedians. But I suppose Maren and the sycophants who have raised this "Toni" to a classic contemporary film status, even to be adapted as a Hollywood remake for Jack Nicholson to overact in, all follow the tradition of European genuflection to the great Jerry.For me, even more disconcerting was Peter's odd similarity to Giancarlo Giannini, as if the brilliant Italian actor had overdosed on pasta to put on heft for this showcase role. But alas, Simonischek is no Giannini, nor can Giannini hold a candle to his immediate forbears in the Italian comedy firmament: Manfredi, Tognazzi and Sordi being my favorites, two of whom I was fortunate enough to interview back in my film journalist days of the '80s. So even had Maren cast GG, this film would likely have still self-destructed.Slogging it out to the bitter end, even more annoying was the glib and mindless ending Ade falls back on to round out her saga. Daddy Winifried and his alter ego Toni Erdmann are painfully hanging around our poor daughter heroine's neck like an albatross, or carrying Bill Murray's also annoying (but oh so successful with the fans) Bob to Richard Dreyfuss in ""What About Bob?" (the epitome of the comedy formula Ade is recycling, literally as old as the Monty Woooley "The Man Who Came to Dinner" play and film adaptation) to its extreme. He's supposed to be teaching his kid, in a ham-fisted way, that old lesson of "live, live, live", a theme I enjoyed endlessly back in the '60s watching films that became increasingly offbeat, perhaps reaching an apotheosis in "Harold and Maude". But what does Ade finish up with?SPOILER:She has daughter Ines (played by Sandra Huller) quit her thankless and straw man-hateful for the audience job as hatchet man/consultant to move to China and work as a consultant for McKinsey & Co.! Other than namedropping, this hardly strikes me as a Flower Power generation dropping out and starting anew but is clearly a cynical ending as misanthropic as the world view of dear departed Terry Southern. Casting Huller, soon to be impersonated by Kristen Wiig, as typical a Hollywoodization as transforming Naomi Rapace into Rooney Mara, was yet another roadblock to enjoying or even tolerating this movie. From first sight, she hit me as if some conglomeration of Yank stars Gwyneth Paltrow and Claire Danes had been whupped by the ugly stick. Her walk- through performance was one-note (to be charitable), and the gimmicky full-nudity scene accorded her in the last couple of reels (more suitable to a Benny Hill sketch or other sort of Joe McGrath goonish soft-core comedy, "The Magic Christian" helmer having also directed the likes of "Girls Come First" and "I'm Not Feeling Myself Tonight") was quite off-putting. Getting back to the Giannini connection in my wandering mind, had Lina Wertmuller in her '70s prime directed something on the order of "Toni Erdmann", that didactic director would at least have let the viewers ogle a beauty like Mariangela Melato, thank you very much.