After tonight, I've now seen three movies in theaters in Mannheim: "The Dark Knight Rises", "Brave" (or, as the Germans like to call it, "Merida: Legend of the Highlands"), and now "The Campaign". I watched those last two at the local cinema's weekly English Sneak Preview night, when they screen a movie—complete with American trailers and sans German subtitles—that's already out in America but hasn't yet been released in German/y. The twist is that they don't tell you the movie you're going to see until you get there, so there's a chance it will be a bust (they make up for this by charging less—only 5,90), but so far I've had pretty good luck.
I expected the Sneak nights (for some reason Germans like to shorten it to Sneak instead of Preview—don't ask) to be filled with Americans, and there are certainly a conspicuous number of native English speakers there, but I was blown away by the sheer number of Germans who prefer to watch movies in English. (I may have touched on this in an earlier post, but comedies especially are far more entertaining when you can hear the original actors, and most Germans I've talked to like watching movies in English for this reason.) As a matter of fact, I was the only American in my group on both of the Sneak nights I've been to, which has really turned out to be an advantage: when I'm aware that there are cultural references that my friends may not get, it makes me far more conscious of the subtle jokes in the movies that I watch. This wasn't really an issue for "Brave" (the only remarkable quirk of watching that movie with Germans was that they didn't realize that the character with the unintelligible Scottish accent was supposed to be unintelligible—they kept asking me what he was saying), but it certainly enhanced my viewing experience tonight. Here are just a few highlights from seeing "The Campaign" in Germany (there will probably be some spoilers):
- The theater always starts the English Sneak nights with a three-question quiz for prizes (T-shirts, free tickets and the like). The first question was incredibly easy: "Chuck Norris played a ranger in which US state?" But the Germans I was with were totally non-plussed. They've never heard of "Walker, Texas Ranger" here, which in retrospect isn't all that surprising.
- Just for some background on the movie itself: it centers on a Congressional election in North Carolina, with Will Ferrell playing Cam Brady, the incumbent, and Zach Galifianakis playing Marty Huggins, the unlikely challenger. The bad guys are two wealthy brothers in big business/campaign finance (Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow—seriously, this cast is loaded), and if that's not a clear enough parody, their names are the Motch brothers. Of course, that not-so-subtle dig went over the heads of the audience here, since most Germans have no ideas who the Koch brothers are.
- Speaking of things going over the audience's collective head-space, there were a few jokes that should have gotten much bigger laughs but were either too subtle or too obscure for the German public. At one point Brady's campaign creates an ad that puts a positive spin on his affair by emphasizing the hotness of the girl he screwed and showing pictures of him shaking hands with Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger—not sure the Germans got the whole "adulterous politicians" connection. There's also a nice Ted-Nugent-is-a-gun-nut joke that got nary a laugh and a mammy-archetype-subversion that didn't play nearly as well as it could have. But the saddest moment for me was when no one laughed at Huggins's wife's admission that she sometimes touches herself to Drew Carey on "The Price is Right"—I can understand Germans not knowing the show, but I figured that Carey would still be relatively well known in Europe.
- More Germans-are-uncomfortable-with-Jew-jokes goodness: Huggins starts off his first political speech by saying, "my dad taught me two things about making speeches: don't insult the Jews, and tell a good story," and I was quite literally the only person in the theater who laughed. On the plus side, a later scene where Huggins tries to interact with a rabbi in a synagogue went off much better.
- There were a few moments of self-parody that were close enough to German stereotypes of America that they got more slightly uncomfortable "ouch, that hits close to home" laughs than outright "oh, that's really funny" laughs. The most noticeable example came in the scene where Huggins shouts down Brady for writing a picture book in second grade about Rainbow Land, where "everything is free." Huggins then makes a statement to the effect of "distribution of wealth is evil," and the laughs in the theater were accompanied by mild groans that seemed to be asking, "wait a minute, are we sure Americans don't actually believe that?" I got a similar feeling during a scene that shows the Huggins family eating an inordinate amount of junk food and includes a shot of Marty drinking Twinkie filling through a Twizzler. Instead of laughs at the ludicrousness of it all, there were cries of outright disgust and groans that seemed to be asking, "wait a minute, are we sure Americans don't actually eat that?"
I'm sure there are a few more that I'm forgetting, but you get the general idea. Still, the most baffling thing about German movie theaters is the fact that there's assigned seating—it just seems like more of an inconvenience than anything. But on the plus side, I was able to get the American-style "salty" popcorn instead of the typical German sweet stuff this time around, which quenched a long-standing craving—now if only I can get my hands on some of that fake butter I'll be all set.
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