Father's Days - Grandpa Overnight

36-year-old Basti (Sebastian Bezzel) leads a relaxed life in Munich as a rickshaw driver and convinced single. Responsibility is a foreign word to him. He'd rather enjoy life to the fullest: making music with his band, the Wadlbeißern, seducing attractive tourist girls or relaxing and enjoying a nice Weißwurst. But the nice life of the lottery is over in one fell swoop when 17-year-old Dina (Sarah Horváth) shows up at his door and reveals to the bewildered Basti not only that she is his daughter, but that she already has a child of her own. The newly minted grandpa is now finally supposed to fulfill his fatherly duties and pay her the child support she is entitled to after seventeen years; on the other hand, Dina's mother, with whom Basti had a one-night stand eighteen years ago, would not shy away from a child support lawsuit. But the 15,000 euros that the girl is demanding is, of course, not something the bon vivant can come up with so easily. And while he tries to scrape together the money from his sister Thea (Monika Gruber) and his father Lambert (Heiner Lauterbach), a tentative friendship develops between Dina and him, which, however, still has a big lie standing in its way.

Father Days - Grandpa Overnight doesn't really ignite at first sight. The beginning of the comedy is very bumpy and very clichéd staged. The very forced Ossi dialect of Dina's friend Natalie quickly gets on your nerves and really doesn't bode well for the rest of the film. But it's worth staying on the ball. Because once director Ingo Rasper has found his pace and freed his characters from the initial clichés, the film can unfold a lot of wit and charm, which in the end leaves quite a positive overall picture.

Sebastian Bezzel is perfectly cast as a somewhat chaotic bon vivant who just doesn't want to grow up and has to face an extreme responsibility all at once. Somehow, Bezzel's charming performance makes it hard to resent Basti's all-too-obvious weaknesses and flaws. And even the many rather shallow gags or arguably stale clichés that this character is confronted with, Bezzel masters with bravura. And also the other actors make sure that the good mood they obviously had while playing is also transferred to the audience. And when hip-hop blast music from Moop Mama hits, you can't help but leave the cinema with a big grin on your face.

Surely, Father Days - Grandpa Overnight is not great cinema entertainment. At many moments, you feel like the movie would just be better off on TV. And every now and then you just roll your eyes in annoyance in the face of the really flat gags. But then again there are moments when either the pictures, the gags or the heartiness hit the mark. And in those moments, it just doesn't matter how shallow the comedy, how stale the clichés, or how predictable the story is. Because then the whole thing is just fun and in a good mood. And that's exactly what cinema is supposed to be for. So if you don't expect much, like German comedy with a slightly Bavarian touch and don't insist on profound humor, you can be really entertained by this movie. And in this case it's worth seeing

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp