Dir: Til Schweiger
By Harriet Beaney
When Keinohrhasen (literally, Rabbits Without Ears) first hit German cinemas in 2007 it was a box office success, attracting waves of young people to the cinema and becoming the sixth most popular German film since 1968.
A quirky and light-hearted romantic-comedy, it tells the story of Ludo, the Don Juan of journalists, (played by director Til Schweiger) who is sentenced to 300 hours of community service in a nursery. There, he meets an attractive woman called Anna, who he used to bully at school and who still harbours a bitter resentment towards him. A series of comic mishaps ensue, interspersed with popular music from the likes of The Killers and Justin Timberlake.
The film is often cheesy, true to the romantic-comedy formula, but it would have undoubtedly been hugely popular worldwide had it been made by Hollywood. It does, however, have more of an edge than your typical rom-com, touching interestingly on the themes of fame, journalism and the moralities of both.
This thoughtfulness is typical of Schweiger, who brought out another brilliant film called Barfuss in 2005, which portrays the complex story of a man (also played by Schweiger) who falls in love with a mental patient. This story is much darker and more gut-wrenching, but both are well worth a watch. There is also Keinohrhasen 2, released in 2009, but this doesn’t have the darkly comic spark of the other films and is perhaps best reserved for Schweiger’s biggest fans.
Keinohrhasen Trailer
