Turkish for Beginners (2012)

Memorable, crazy movie

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I really liked the TV show; it was funny, and sweet, and mostly realistic. Everything came together in a believable way, and the slowly developing relationship between Cem & Lena was actually romantic.This awful movie is NONE of those things. The entire story has been changed, and Cem and Lena meet on a tropical island after their plane to Thailand crashes in the Indian Ocean. The two families just happen to be on the same plane. The movie is a poorly realized gimmick, that takes the same actors/characters from a much loved TV series, and recreates their entire history. For fans it is a slap in the face, and I cannot imagine any fan of the show not HATING this stupid movie. The comedy is so unfunny that I felt embarrassed for the actors, and the music is cheesy and terrible too. Oh, and the 'romance' has been replaced with sexual attraction. What worked on television does not work on the big screen. I guess this is what happens when you condense a long story into 90 minutes. On a side note, I used to like the actor Elyas M'Barek. After this one, not so much; they made a fool of him in this one. And Costa, my favorite character from the show, is called a "retard" more than 50 times, by everyone in the cast. The real Cem from the series would never have made fun of his best friends speech problem. This whole production is just cheesy, sleazy and disgusting..

"Türkisch für Anfänger" is a German film from 3 years ago that is actually a spin-off from a really successful German television series. I have not seen that series, but it's really hard for me to believe that they made it work looking at how big a mess this film has become. The writer and director is Bora Dagtekin and he was also the creator of the television show. You may know him better from his recent film "Fack Ju Göhte", one of the most commercially successful German movies of all time and of course they will make a sequel soon. But back to this one here. The biggest problem is definitely the script. Hardly a single line feels authentic that it's really coming from the character and not just an actor pretending to say it. Of course this also has to do with the talent (or lack thereof) from the lead actors Josefine Preuß and Elyas M'Barek.They thought to make this somewhat special by putting all the action on a tropic island, but they really failed here. The banter by the protagonists and the constant question on how masculine is too masculine and how emancipated the female character has to be in order to be respected but not annoying is pretty bad. It's sad to see how this film actually takes itself so seriously at times and at other times is trying so hard to be funny. And it fails on all fronts. One of the worst parts would be when that guy kisses the mother of Preuß' character at the end, but it still can be worse. The worst moment of all is when the mother tells the daughter that she is glad that her daughter finally did drugs. Like wtf? Then again, it's just the tip of the iceberg. There are embarrassing scenes every couple minutes. Truly embarrassing. Not just uninteresting and unrealistic, but really even way worse than that. Probably the worst German movie of 2012 and it's quite a shame it's actually among the most known from that year too as it really gives a bad name to German cinema. Highly recommended to stay away.

The acting was nice, not too enjoyable, but still nice. The story was pretty plain, but in a good way, thought, I don't remember how it started, so I have no idea what to say about that strange old(?) lady with blonde hair and her transition into the main story.To me, the characters were very interesting, but not enough to remember their names. The main cast (as I understand - the 2 males and 2 females) was different enough to enjoy them. Overall (not like I said much anyway), the movie was funny enough for me, but to be honest, I wouldn't suggest it to anyone else.

In fact, there is no measurement HOW bad this is!It starts with the most dreadful "acting" I have seen in along time, and this goes for every single character in the movie. It's like they asked random people right off the street if they'd like to be in a movie.The story is harebrained and stupid. Not a single line of the dialog is even remotely funny, every second of it is so embarrassing, you feel ashamed for watching it.It's playing with the lowest of clichés possible and failing even at that. I admit, I walked out after 20 minutes of pain but I am absolutely sure it did not get any better after that.Oh, and did I already mention how bad the acting is?