The Kangaroo Chronicles

Available now for purchase and rental, among others. available on iTunes, Prime Video

The unsuccessful cabaret artist Marc-Uwe (Dimitrij Schaad) is astonished when one day a kangaroo shows up at his door. The cheeky creature, a self-confessed communist, then makes himself comfortable with the completely overwhelmed Marc-Uwe and turns his life upside down. The new flat-sharing community in Kreuzberg is soon in danger, however, because the house is to make way for the construction project of a right-wing populist real estate shark (Henry Hübchen). Of course, the kangaroo can't let that happen. Together with Marc-Uwe and the neighbours who are also threatened by the building project, the right-wing sock is to be put in his place. Luckily, the kangaroo already has the perfect plan for that.

With The Kangaroo Chronicles, Marc-Uwe Kling kicked off a true success story in 2009. The book version of the award-winning radio column Neues vom Känguru (News of the Kangaroo) on Berlin's Radio Fritz quickly gained a huge following as a book and audiobook, so that more volumes, sold-out live readings and several Kangaroo plays followed. And so now the feature film, directed by Dani Levy (Alles auf Zucker!). The first minutes are absolutely promising, transporting the special humor of the books very well to the screen, while also playing with typical movie clichés in an original way.

The visual realization can also convince. The animated kangaroo fits perfectly into the scenery. So far, so good. But quickly the film reveals a few clear weaknesses. What worked really well in the short episodes of the first book, which were often biting and also cryptic, seems forced here and above all frighteningly flat. Sure, there are some really amusing moments and fans of the books are guaranteed to be satisfied as well. But the way AfD-bashing is done here with a very left-wing sledgehammer is simply not conducive to the (well-intentioned) cause.

Please don't misunderstand: The problem isn't that the film takes a clear political stance. It's more the way it does it. Instead of using intelligent, subtle humor to expose and expose the politicians of a party like the AfD, the film relies on really flat clichés. Simply hammering the audience about how stupid Nazis are is really not enough to grasp the complexity of the problem that not only our country is currently struggling with. And it's not really that funny. Left good, Right (and Reich) bad - that is unfortunately far too one-dimensional thinking. Here, one wonders if Levy and Kling didn't trust their audience to catch on to more subtle humor, or if they just couldn't come up with anything better. To me, it all just seemed like the makers were just patting themselves on the back here, along the lines of look, we're the good guys because we say Nazis suck. And of course, so does everyone with money.

The Kangaroo Chronicles has good moments and is guaranteed to draw enough fans to theaters to make the comedy a success. But overall the humour is often very flat, the plot too muddled and the characters too overdrawn for the film to have become a successful satire. This bestseller adaptation would have definitely had what it takes. At least: The numerous movie quotes are well done and fun to watch. But the whole thing is still only worth seeing for kangaroo fans!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp