Considering that “Fashion Victims” is billed as a comedy, the viewer spends a surprising amount of time feeling sorry for the main characters rather than laughing. Don’t get me wrong, the premise has potential: Wolfgang, who sells conservative clothes for older women, has his driver’s license revoked just when he needs to compete with younger man Steven, who wants to take the company in a new direction. To keep up, Wolfgang cancels his son’s vacation and forces him to drive him from store to store, pitching his clothes.

Meanwhile, the son, Karsten, falls in love with Steven, unaware that
Steven is his father’s rival, and without his father even knowing he’s gay. The comedic possibilities are surely there. But rather than focusing on this bizarre triangle (or square, once Wolfgang’s wife gets involved) of misunderstandings, the movie shows a lot of scenes of Karsten being bored while his father fails to sell clothes or Wolfgang getting into financial trouble and alienating his wife. Granted, a lot of great comedy involves laughing at other people’s pain, but especially in today’s economy, this felt too real to be funny.

As the plot progresses, there are a few good scenes. The climax, in which all the main characters end up in different rooms of an inn without realizing it, (and involves theft, guns, nudity and a lake) is plenty engaging. It has all the right ingredients for hilarity. And yet somehow, I still wasn’t quite laughing. Maybe the German humor just didn’t translate.

The actual language barrier isn’t a problem. The subtitles, far from being a distraction, helped the flow of the movie. All the scenes of sales pitches
for clothes might have been a bit slow if I hadn’t needed a few extra seconds to read the subtitles. And there were a few cute moments of role reversal that hinged on the exact repetition of previous lines, so the visual learners in the audience were more likely to get the jokes since the words were right there on the screen.

The problem with this movie wasn’t one of nationality; it was one of genre. If director Ingo Rasper had chosen to pitch the movie as just a slice of life, rather than attempting humor in a movie that was generally not humorous, it might have been more enjoyable to watch. But then, the question remains: Why should people spend their money and nearly two hours of their lives watching it? I have no good answer to this question. And until I meet a German person who found it hilarious, I will maintain that “Fashion Victims” simply fell flat.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 8:12 pm and is filed under Cadenza, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through this feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.