"Mein Blind Date mit dem Leben" is a German 110-minute movie from 2017, so the day I am writing this review it is still a release from this year, a pretty new and fresh film. It is the newest effort by prolific filmmaker Marc Rothemund and having seen some of his stuff, there is some good and some bad I would say, so I wasn't sure what to expect. But it all turned out well. This may have to do with the fact that the central character here Saliya Kahawatte is based on an actually living person and that one also worked closely with the makers of this film it seems. Good choice. I am not a fan of lead actor Kostja Ullmann at all though. I have seen movies where he is genuinely terrible, but here he was a smart casting decision I guess. he still isn't doing anything special at all I would say, but he also does nothing bad, so it is all good. One criticism I have though is that there are really many talented actors in here (Ramadan, Pistor, Mühe, Farooq, von Bülow) and that several of these were somewhat wasted as their characters were there and had conversations with the protagonist, but really had nothing too impressive to offer and could have been left out of the film entirely. But that's also almost my only problem. Another would be that the sex references (the sex scene and the talk towards the end) are not working at all, but I (don't) understand that every German comedy these days needs to have these for whatever reason.
The positive luckily is still much more frequent than the negative here. The general idea and plot may be pretty absurd, but eventually the film is all about making the impossible possible as we see a man who is almost blind managing to become a certificate that allows him to work in a hotel thanks to his drive and dedication. Yes the end is a bit too much on the happy side with him even turning down the offer of the man who was the main antagonist for a long time and becoming his own boss and the love interest showing up out of nowhere and obviously becoming his girlfriend, but I can look beyond that because the movie was really entertaining, smart and significant in a way I hoped for, but did not expect. Ullmann did a good job just like everybody else. Matschenz is in it from the very beginning for the lighter parts and comedy entertainment really and he is working the script well too, maybe gave the best performance in the entire thing. As a whole, this film certainly deserves a thumbs-up and that's what it gets. There are some great moments even and these are evened out by some weak moments Ik mentioned earlier that overall we have a rock-solid outcome. Now Germany has a successful film too about a lobby boy. Go see it.
The positive luckily is still much more frequent than the negative here. The general idea and plot may be pretty absurd, but eventually the film is all about making the impossible possible as we see a man who is almost blind managing to become a certificate that allows him to work in a hotel thanks to his drive and dedication. Yes the end is a bit too much on the happy side with him even turning down the offer of the man who was the main antagonist for a long time and becoming his own boss and the love interest showing up out of nowhere and obviously becoming his girlfriend, but I can look beyond that because the movie was really entertaining, smart and significant in a way I hoped for, but did not expect. Ullmann did a good job just like everybody else. Matschenz is in it from the very beginning for the lighter parts and comedy entertainment really and he is working the script well too, maybe gave the best performance in the entire thing. As a whole, this film certainly deserves a thumbs-up and that's what it gets. There are some great moments even and these are evened out by some weak moments Ik mentioned earlier that overall we have a rock-solid outcome. Now Germany has a successful film too about a lobby boy. Go see it.