Customer Reviews

Go for Zucker

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It's a comedy, first of all. It's not trying to plow new ground. What it's doing is tell lots of little slapstick jokes around the themes of cross-cultural confusion and similar.

And it works. This is a genuinely fun movie. I recommend viewers click around on wikipedia beforehand, dusting off their knowledge of the GDR. This movie touches a lot on religion, but there's an element of "Ostalgie" -- nostalgia for East Germany -- involved here.

A fantastic comedy, people who loved Billy Wilder will certainly enjoy Go for Zucker. Finally a comedy for grown-ups who can appreciate a good script, something we miss in Hollywood movies. It needs some knowledge of Jewish tradition.

Funny and heart-warming story of 2 families in Berlin reunited after the collapse of the Berlin wall. Very well done. For the whole family.

I saw this movie in Germany and thought it was ok, though not very original except perhaps for the fact that its a German comedy based partially on jewish themes. The German title is "Alles auf Zucker" which alludes to the betting nature of the protagonist, whose name is Zucker. Basically, the story is about an older Berlin pool hustler, married with children, who happens to be jewish and who only has playing, betting and money on his mind. If I recall, he owes a large gambling debt and hopes to win the money he needs in a pool championship. As he's about to enter into a championship match he finds out that his orthodox jewish brother and family are coming to Berlin in order to settle their deceased mother's will. Zucker has not seen his brother for many years and lives very differently (hardly knows what kosher is, or any jewish religious beliefs). Much of the comedy comes from the clash from Zucker's orthodox jewish family staying with him as Zucker's wife tries hard to keep up appearances and pretend they are orthodox as well, and also from Zucker trying at all costs to play in the championship match (including faking a heart attack) while family duties demand his attention.

The movie has a complicated plot, true, leading to some amusing moments. But there are also disturbing, gratuitous plot elements. First cousins discover that they know each other already - because they had had an affair years earlier. Most people would be horrified to discover that they had had relations with their own cousin, but not here. Other cousins - one a nymphomaniac, the other very repressed - predictably link up, even knowing that they are first cousins. In any case, it is decidedly NOT for the whole family, as another reviewer suggested.
Its best moments come from the East German family's "Kosher for Dummies"-level cramming to keep up Jewish appearances. Because of this the movie has some minor significance in being the first postwar film in which the directors and the German audience were comfortable with Jewish humor. But if the film were set in France or Chicago instead of Berlin, I doubt we'd be paying much attention to it.

Not a bad film; has some real perspectives on life in general if you can stick with it. My wife is into foreign films so I ordered it for her for her birthday at her request and then she made me watch it with her. To me it was "mildly interesting" but I'm sure my wife thought it was great.

This is a pretty anti-semitic movie if you ask me. It's scripted as a comedy, but when you start thinking about it, it's a rather chilling reminder of how deeply rooted anti-semitism is in some parts of the world. I picked this up because I like comedies and foreign movies, but was sorely disappointed.

The film is a story about families of two Jewish brothers who've been estranged for 40 years when the Berlin wall came up. The one, Jackie, is left behind by his calculating mother and the rest of the family in the East while they escape to the West and happily prosper. Jackie in the mean time becomes a famous sports caster and a pool player in the East. The story starts after the reunification of Germany when Jackie receives the news of his mother's death and his brother's family's coming from the West to settle the inheritance. Jackie is in financial trouble as he runs a non-profitable brothel - a fact he carefully hides from his Christian wife. He only cares about money, but in a funny way so why not laugh about it right? Wrong. The list of stereotypes about Jewish people this movie portrays goes on and it's actually pretty scary. So Jackie's daughter turns lesbian because she's not allowed to pursue her love for her cousin from the West, who in turn becomes orthodox in his views to cover his broken heart. Jackie's brother is also an orthodox Jew who is also an unscrupulous capitalist. When he visits Jackie's establishment he has no problem with his orthodoxy and spends some happy time with a Palestinian hooker who works at Jackie's bar. Again, what a stereotype! The Jews only pretend to be religious and take advantage of Palestinians for sexual pleasure. Jackie in the mean time pretends to turn religious and even his family goes along, just so they can get their piece of inheritance. All the while Jackie sneaks out of the house on and off to play in a major pool tournament he's poised to win and cash in some big bucks to pay off his debts. And the list goes on and on.

When you really look beyond the "fun" and realize what the movie is really saying then it's hard to give this movie more than one star. This is almost like propaganda from a Nazi Germany in the 1930's. It too made funny cartoons of the Jews, portraying them as money mongers without character or moral, ultimately deserving nothing more than extermination. To me it's shocking that a movie like this was made in Germany as a comedy, something to laugh about as if to justify and soothe the nagging memory of guilt from the WWII days. It's a disgrace.