Cinema musical with songs by Udo Jürgens: Come on, give yourself a present!

There are people who do not like the songs of Udo Jürgens, and most of them do not like musicals either. This is not a movie for these people. You can not say it explicitly enough: In "I have never been to New York", well-known German actors sing for two hours without distress and without shame the lyrics of "17 years, blond hair" or "But please with cream" in the direction Camera and act as if it resulted in an action.

Yes, crazy. But these are crazy times. At "Mamma Mia!" it worked that much before, twice even. Only stop with Abba instead of Udo Jürgens. And with Meryl Streep instead of Heike Makatsch.

Who now finds, the hits of Jürgens can not keep up with Abba and Makatsch not with Streep: oh, well. There is no other German-speaking musician whose huge canon can sing so many people as faultless as that of Jürgens, whether they like it or not; and there are hardly any German actresses who like the audience as much as Heike Makatsch - whether they know why, or not.

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It is pointless, "I was never in New York" to meet with the usual parameters of film criticism, even that was already "Mamma Mia!" so. Both movies are based on mindless but entertaining stage musicals * that had been watched by millions of people for fun and nostalgia and hits, not dramaturgy and dialogue and art. None of them will now go to the cinema to gain insight.

In this respect, it must be director Philipp Stölzl - in addition to feature films like "Goethe!" also staged music videos for Madonna and operas for the Salzburg Festival - credit that he and screenwriter Alexander Dydyna approached it with more artistic ambition than the team of "Mamma Mia!". While they have taken over the stage original almost one-to-one and enriched only with some Greek sun and glamorous movie stars, "I was never in New York" left only a scaffold from the original plot and tried to interpret the hits in a completely new way.

The film is also basically about how the gluttonous, but secretly lonely presenter Lisa Wartberg (Makatsch) follows her chipped mother Maria (Katharina Thalbach) on a cruise ship headed for New York. However, the mother did not escape from her old age home with her boyfriend, but lost her memory after falling in the kitchen - but just then, when "I've never been to New York" was on the radio, and that's why she ends up without a ticket on a ship to New York. There she happens to meet her first great love, a widowed professor meets her daughter and her makeup artist on a Greek magician. Everyone falls in love, and then no more, and then again. And no one has said that the new plot makes more sense than the old one.

"I have never been to New"
Germany 2019
Director: Philipp Stölzl
Book: Alexander Dydyna, Philipp Stölzl after the musical by Gabriel Barylli, Christian Struppeck, Udo Jürgens
Starring: Heike Makatsch, Katharina Thalbach, Moritz Bleibtreu, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Pasquale Aleardi,
Production: Ziegler Film, UFA Fiction, Mythos Film, Graf Film
Rental: Universal
Length: 128 minutes
FSK: from 0 years
Start: 17th October 2019

He does not have to. Because it is more important that the plot adapts to the Udo-Jurgens texts. Therefore, the mother is 66 years old ("66 years"), so the widower (Moritz Bleibtreu) sings his dead wife in between a serenade ("Merci, Chérie"), so there is a never-ending breakfast scene ("Stay but until for breakfast ") and so on. What does not fit, is made to fit - so the ship is just called MS Maximiliane and "But please with cream" can be "On the Maximiliane".

It is noteworthy that the hits rarely get smashed away in the typical musical tone. Some are only hinted at, some more spoken than sung, some missed a smoky jazz touch - and some quite omitted, such as "A Honorable House", one of the viewer's favorites of the original.

This is artistically not uninteresting, but may also be due to the fact that with Thalbach, Makatsch and Bleibtreu three of the best actors in the country were committed, but not the best singers or even dancers. Makatsch and Thalbach compensate for what they lack in lung volume with a maximum of charm and wit - more vociferous supporting actors like Pasquale Aleardi and Uwe Ochsenknecht (!) Still steal the show from time to time.

In the video: The trailer for "I've never been to New York"

Video

Universal Pictures

And if so. Main thing show! To squeaky scenes fits just squeaky singing. Everyone involved gives everything here at any time, even if they can not do everything. And if there are people who find this silly and cheesy and embarrassing, then they are just in the wrong movie. The rest is singing along.

* The author has seen both and is not ashamed of it.