Review of Toni Erdmann (2016) by Craig P — 17 Feb 2017

Unless I'm dying to see a movie, an almost-three-hour runtime will likely deter me to an extent in one way or another, and here the issue was simply having over three straight hours of no commitments.

I had no expectations for Toni Erdmann despite its acclaim and Best Foreign Language Film nomination for this year's Oscars, but it pains me to say that I wasn't impressed with this. Of course comedy is subjective, but what's disheartening is when jokes that would seem to work for you in most circumstances falter because they're so stretched out and often overstay their welcomes.

The performances are solid and a fair amount of the movie's content is amusing, but dragging it out to 162 minutes doesn't do it any favors, especially when the humor isn't that nuanced to begin with.

Ines (Sandra Hüller) is a rather uptight corporate strategist who is visited by her father Winfried (Peter Simonischek) without warning after his dog dies. He makes a plethora of corny dad jokes and teases her lifestyle, at times interfering with her career and annoying her until he decides to leave and come back as his alter-ego Toni Erdmann, complete with fake teeth and a bizarre wig, and Ines is forced to give consideration to her relationship with her dad.

It's your standard straight person/fool pairing, and the movie plays with it decently, largely due to Hüller's performance, which keeps the movie grounded a majority of the time. Surprisingly, there isn't a ton for me to say about Toni Erdmann because despite its duration, there isn't a lot here.

It's generally takes the path that you'd expect, but that's not the issue since it doesn't usually take itself seriously. There's more straightforward drama here than in more comparable movies, which helps hold the movie back from being irritating.

It's consistent in terms of visual style, often times using handheld camerawork without drawing attention to itself, and the movie does elicit some laughs, namely in the first act. It's after that that Toni Erdmann begins to go more into drama territory for the sake of establishing story and character, which I appreciate, but then when it does go comedic, the gags get old.

There's one sequences towards the end of the movie that's bizarre and could have been hilarious, but it's so stretched out that I was never more than amused, and some other scenes feel like they should have been cut and just been on the Blu-Ray.

The first half of the movie is actually very well paced, but it's afterwards that it begins to taper, especially in the final hour. Toni Erdmann does what it sets out to do intermediately, at least in my opinion.

Some sight gags and scenarios are classically silly in ways that are difficult to dislike, but some others are either extraneous or repetitive. I enjoyed myself for a notable amount of the movie, but it's the inability to maintain my interest or keep me laughing that led me to conclude that I can't see myself making an effort to see or watch this movie again.

There's a reason why comedies are usually the shortest of all genres. 6/10, okay, C+, average, etc.