Here we have a 1.5-hour television movie from Austria and this one premiered in early 2016. The title means pretty much "If you only knew how beautiful it is here", so a bit of a truly harmless title, and this film belongs to the Austrian series of Landkrimi films, crime movies with more than an ounce of comedy that take place in the Austrian countryside and you could say they are a bit of an equivalent to the German films like Grießnockerlaffäre. Back to this one here: The director is certainly the star here as Andreas Prochaska has some films in his body of work that made solid waves recently, not just in the German-speaking countries, but also abroad. As for the cast here, you will probably only really know some of the actors if you are an Austrian film buff. It's more about the ensemble than about individual performances.
But while I like some of the other region-based crime comedies from not too long ago (and there are actually many of them), this one here did not do very much for me. Making the characters look gimmicky alone isn't enough as they may have achieved that, but they never made them interesting enough. I also felt they may have included too many and keeping the number down, but elaborating properly on them would certainly have been the wiser. Same about the actual crime case here. The question who murdered the girl and why really only stays relevant for the first half of the film. After minute 45, it loses itself in the script and feels all over the place from all kinds of perspectives. I can only say I did not care too much for the characters or the case eventually. I don't think I have seen any other entries to the actually fairly successful Landkrimi series, but I certainly hope the other ones are better than this one here. Also among Prochaska's weakest efforts so far. It's a thumbs-down and I suggest you skip it.
But while I like some of the other region-based crime comedies from not too long ago (and there are actually many of them), this one here did not do very much for me. Making the characters look gimmicky alone isn't enough as they may have achieved that, but they never made them interesting enough. I also felt they may have included too many and keeping the number down, but elaborating properly on them would certainly have been the wiser. Same about the actual crime case here. The question who murdered the girl and why really only stays relevant for the first half of the film. After minute 45, it loses itself in the script and feels all over the place from all kinds of perspectives. I can only say I did not care too much for the characters or the case eventually. I don't think I have seen any other entries to the actually fairly successful Landkrimi series, but I certainly hope the other ones are better than this one here. Also among Prochaska's weakest efforts so far. It's a thumbs-down and I suggest you skip it.