annevejb
Early 2016 I purchased four very low cost DVDs as a speculative purchase. Would they be fun second childhood food or not? One was Mean Girls 2, which I was not expecting much of. However the price was low and I do remember a review that suggested that it was a lot better if one did not expect it to be a true sequel. This is made to very different production values and is much meaner than the original, but that could be the direction rather than the script.The others were Die Wilden Kerle 1 to 3. The DVD boxes were fully in German, but the distributor was Buena Vista so I assume that there was likely to be an English language alternate soundtrack, or at least subs. The first feature turned out to be German only, but the other two had English subtitles.If I had read the IMDb reviews before purchase I would have avoided these. As is I found both 2 and 3 to be fairly typical of average quality features for kids. Technically weak but interesting none the less. I accept that such stories often get poor IMDb reviews. Personally, I found these imaginative Wilden stories to be a breath of fresh air.The second feature involves a feud between a mostly boys sports team and its banker. The story flow is based on a pseudo vampire luring the team's best player away by careful use of romance, something that the team itself does not have a clue about. A quality story.The third feature centres on a feud between the team and someone who left them in the early years, friendship destroyed, a different sort of love being central. All good stuff even though the acting feels weak. A nice extra for me is that this is a transgender story.I was impelled to get the disk of DWK5 and that is up to the same standard. In this the love theme is the bad guy having a type of love that sucks the victim into eternal chains, eternal death. It also does not get good reviews, but some should be able to get a lot of fun out of these stories, despite that.In comparison, Mean Girls 2 felt weak. It also reminded me of Disney stuff such as Camp Rock 1 and 2, but weaker. I can still find entertainment in Mean Girls 2, though.
Horst in Translation ([email protected])
This wild guys sequel is just as much nonsense as the first film and the three next movies. A prime example of what a movie should not be. Rufus Beck and Cornelia Froboess did good in not returning and I wonder what the German Film Academy was thinking when they nominated this piece of crap for Best Children's film a second time??? It came out 1.5 years after the first and the only known cast member really is Uwe Ochsenknecht who is probably only in it because his kids are. The director and writer is Joachim Masannek again and his sons are back as are most of the other child actors.i have to say Uwe Ochsenknecht has a scene here and there where he put a smile on my lips, but his sons are just useless in terms of acting and would never have a career without their established father pulling the right strings. Here the enemy is a pale vampire guy (long before the Twilight hype) who looks like a young retarded Jack Sparrow and that the female main character is interested in. Of course, she is. In the end an evil witch is brought to life and she may have been the biggest wtf-moment in the entire series. The way she is depicted is plain horrible and it was so random as nothing before indicted any kind of supernatural characters in these films. Cringeworthy beyond belief. As is the music. Bananafishbones suck so much here and in the other films. Especially their closing credit songs are rubbish. The idea of making and using songs that depict the mood of the characters is a good one, but the execution was a complete mess. The same can be said for pretty much all other aspects of these films, especially the whole rambling about being wild. The plot deals with finding out who your real friends are, but the whole script is not worth the paper it was written on. And why is the smaller Ochsenknecht son suddenly the love interest of Gries' character? In the first film, it was still somebody else who randomly disappeared. Do yourself a favor and stay away. Oh wait, the best thing about this film? It's the shortest of the five, does not even run for 80 minutes (not counting the credits), so the torture ends soon.
