"Vier kriegen ein Kind" is a German television film from 2014, so this one had its 5th anniversary last year. The title is a little play on words, which is really difficult to explain in English, but it is basically about the similarity between the German words for "four" and "we" and it expresses that it is not 2 people having a child as usual, but four people instead. The director is Matthias Steurer and he has been pretty prolific, but also many works in his history that are definitely nothing to be proud of quality-wise. The writer is Volker Krappen and he is/was definitely considerably less prolific and looking at his body of work, the perception seems pretty accurate that he did not really have many failures, but also nothing really of quality. This description also fits this movie. It is basically about a quartet of characters and almost nobody else. All minor characters are really minor and never have more than two scenes. The four lead actors include some known names. Friederike Kempter is of course very famous here in Germany thanks to Tatort Münster and Marc Hosemann is an actor who is also always easy to identify and I like seeing him, not only because of how much he resembles Dr.. Cox (or the actor) from Scrubs. He also gave the best performance in this film here I would say. Kempter was alright too, but did not always hit the right notes. Basically, you can say she as on one level with Christian Näthe and him I did not know, but he was alright overall. A bit surprising to see him cast in the lead here. Then again, what is far more surprising, outrageoously surprising really, is the casting of Christina Hecke and how can they even give her first credit. Man she as so bad. Admittedly, she also played the character that was maybe the most challenging and the only character who had a bit of a transformation in this movie, but this is not meant to be said in her favor or the filmmakers' casting directors' favor because they easily could have picked somebody else, no should have picked somebody else. Like I wwrote in the title of my review, Hecke is so bad from beginning to end that it ia certainly a negative dealbrealer here. I will not mention any specific scenes or moments, but basically every time she had to deliver some more serious material, she came incredibly short. It was painful to watch, especially because her character is all about the serious material really. Very stereotypically written too I must say and it would have required a far more versatile actress than Hecke to make it work. But it would not have been impossible. Her performance is a parody at best, but never a portrayal.
Kinda fittingly that just very recently, the actress came out of the closet herself looking at this movie here, at the same time she released an autobiography or something, so clearly a marketing decision, and honestly I feel sorry for people really scared of coming out when celebrities (I can't call Hecke an actress, but well "celebrity may be wrong too because she is not famous at all) like Hecke basically mock them by saying stuff like they want to encourage others to stand up for who they are, but this is really not what this was about at all. She wants to sell more books. Period. I genuinely wonder if the she got the part here by telling the casting directors that she was in the closet. I would not be surprised. But this is no excuse either for casting her. They were certainly looking for somebody as dufferent as it gets compared to Kempter's character. And even when Hecke is not een on the screen to ruin the film and people just talk about her, she sort of destroys this movie. When her partner says that they met at a self-defense class and she broke something really thick with the palms of her hands and the other character responds something like he believes it immediately, it is tough to stomach as a member of the audience here. Luckily, mostly Hosemann's performance and occasionally okay moments from the screenplay keep this film from becoming a total failure really. But it is much clsoer to that than to being a decent watch. Also, the sub-plots went all kinds of wrong, for example the one ith Kempter's character's mother (a familiar face from Stromberg). How she makes such a strong statement that shows she is really homophobe and later on apologizes to her daughter did not make any sense at all. They could not decide what they wanted the mother to be and eventually completely messed up with regard to her and the worst is that they still took themselves so seriously. Not just with regard to that little side story, but also in general all the time. The moment when the film hits rock-bottom is early on probably already when we find out how the lab where they had the procedure performed messed up and that she is carrying somebody else's baby now and not the baby from the guy they picked for her. And the big issue here is that this is a really a major reference because it is the reason how the two couples meet each other. The male couple's attempts to get a child from other people, once early on, again near the end also were neither a worthy addition drama-wise nor funny at all. This film thinks it is a lot funnier than it actually was. One of really not many decent moments and inclusions here was when the woman has a miscarriage. This was a bold decision and I also liked how sobering they depicted it, not with too much drama, but it felt right and realistic. Sadly, for every decent moment, there are several bad moments. The best example is how one woman becomes friends with one man and the other with the other eventually as the couples get closer because of what combines them. Again, Hecke delivers the worst moment acting-wise again when we see her being clearly impressed by Hosemann's character. These two having scenes together was really like the equivalent of Scorsese making a film ith Uwe Boll. Enough said. At least, Hecke did not have any dialogue on this scene because I am sure she would have messed it up with bad line delivery the way she did on many occasions during this film. Overall, it's a weak movie, barely good enough for German afternoon television perhaps. Don't watch.
0 out of 1 found this helpful