User Reviews

This short is fairly good, if a tad obvious in spots and about a subtle as a baseball bat in revealing plot points. Even with the predictable nature of the short, the performances make it quite gripping. Because I want to discuss the short a bit, there are mild spoilers:

This short starts with a man who is having "one of those days"-you know, the kind of day when you feel like you're the punchline of a really bad joke that everyone but you is laughing at all day. The biggest strangeness that happens to him is a little boy who comes up and says, "You need to take me to school, papa", (at least that's the gist of it-the subtitles have a hair-trigger and don't stay on the screen long and I don't follow German well). This surprises the man, because he doesn't have any kids.

You guessed it, along with 75% of those watching-the kid is his, he eventually helps the kid get to school and ruins the rest of his day. One thing that happens I found particularly amusing-he gets possibly the most insulting and humiliating job rejection in the history of humankind, without an interview, all delivered as the man he was scheduled to be interviewed by is meeting his mistress and speaking to his wife on the phone! Though I'm not generally a vindictive type, I'd have gotten his address and phone number, followed him around with a camera, gotten photos and mailed them to his wife! The basic plot points of the short stand out a mile and the ultimate ending is telegraphed early on. In a feature length film, this would be a bad thing much of the time. But in a short only 23 minutes long, figuring out the ending halfway through isn't as troublesome, as long as the other aspects are good enough. The performances keep this engaging. While I doubt I'll watch this too many times, it was worth seeing.

This short is included on a DVD of the Academy Award nominated shorts for the year 2005, which includes all of the live-action nominees and three of five animated nominees. The disc is highly recommended and this short is recommended.

AUSREISSER is a very odd little German film. It begins with a rather ordinary man getting ready to go to a job interview. However, out of the blue, a small boy (Yuri) arrives and asks him to drive him to school. He doesn't know Yuri, but the boy insists that his mother wanted the man to do this and after a while, he relents and takes the child to school. Later, after dropping him off, he realizes the boy left his backpack behind, so he goes to the school looking for the kid. He can't find him there, but instead finds him wandering by a skating rink in the park. The boy insists that the man is his father and he needs to take care of him. Since they can't locate the mother, the man reluctantly agrees to take the boy home to sleep.

Where the film went next was very odd and unexpected, but rather rewarding. What I particularly liked was the unconventional nature of the film--it certainly WASN'T the usual sort of film you'd see! Interesting, somewhat heartwarming and clever, I can see why this film was nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Live Action Short Film.

This 23-minute short film from 11 years ago managed to score an Academy Award nomination and director Ulrike Grote has made herself a career built on it, even more in terms of acting than in terms of directing although she has worked in both areas frequently in the last 10 years. The film#s writer did not manage to get beyond soap opera level really. The two lead actors are also still active in German films and television series to this day. The film is about an unemployed man who ends up with running and cycling through the entire city when a young boy shows up in his life. The boy keeps calling him daddy quickly, so it becomes clear right away what the connection of the two is. In the end, they included a big plot twist which means that the boy was only there in the man's head and nobody saw him as the ghost of the heavily-injured boy was actually calling his father for help after he lost his mother.

Unfortunately, this movie did not connect with me on any level. The main character was too annoying to cheer for and the script with the final development was also better soap opera level in my opinion at best. I'm surprised this short film received so many awards, including an Oscar nomination. Glad to see it did not beat the far superior "Six Shooter". "Ausreisser" has minor performances by Monica Bleibtreu and Burghart Klaußner, two very experienced German actors. Klaußner is a favorite of mine, but he was only really in one scene which was not enough for me. All in all, I do not recommend this movie. It feels to full of itself for me and I never felt that I was watching an intimate story the way it should have been and the way it would have been appropriate for the topic, but instead all the time it looked like a very self-aware unsuccessful attempt at dramatic movie-making with all the crying and screaming and swearing and the final song certainly doesn't help either. Somebody needs to teach Grote and Foerster a lesson in subtlety. Not recommended.