"Buba" on Netflix: Bjarne Mädel was born in pain

Created: 08/09/2022, 16:22

By: Michael Schleicher

"Buba" on Netflix: Bjarne Mädel as Jakob Otto, whom they only call "Buba".

© Bernd Spauke/Netflix

"Buba" is back on Netflix: Bjarne Mädel plays his cult character from the Netflix series "How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast)" in a wild Tarantino-style crime comedy.

Our criticism:

His purpose in life is pain.

The more brutal the better.

Blows, blows, stabs, burns: Jakob Otto, called Buba, craves everything that hurts - and is happy to endure it a little longer.

But the man Bjarne Mädel plays with great composure in “Buba” is anything but crazy.

A terrible misfortune and a shitty upbringing have made him the man of sorrows we get to know him as in Arne Feldhusen's new Netflix film: As a boy, he just happened to not be in the car when his parents died in an accident.

From then on, the cruel grandmother and the sneaky brother made sure that Jakob grew up believing that he had to balance everything positive with negative.

The absurd theory goes that only when he is doing badly is everyone else doing well.

So he tries

to make life as uncomfortable as possible;

He conscientiously notes the pain he has endured and the misfortune he has suffered in his “negative diary”.

Sounds awful, sure.

Above all, it is very funny and told at a fast pace.

With these 94 minutes, Arne Feldhusen and his committed ensemble, who act with enormous joy, succeed in creating a fine genre piece, a rough crime comedy - inspired by Tarantino and the Coen brothers.

Netflix film "Buba": a wild bird fun

Of course, "Buba" is also a reunion with a (supporting) character from the Netflix series "How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast)".

Jakob Otto did not survive the first season of that production;

the film now tells its history – and fortunately makes itself independent of the series.

This is ensured by the screenplay by Sebastian Colley and Isaiah Michalski, which gives the story so much steam, wit and absurdity that it sweeps beyond everything that could be expected.

Georg Friedrich plays Buba's brother Dante in the Netflix film.

© Bernd Spauke/Netflix

After "Stromberg" and the "crime scene cleaner", the film marks director Feldhusen's third collaboration with Bjarne Mädel.

It really doesn't need to be mentioned that the actor has an almost unbelievable ability to change.

It's remarkable how he reduces and withdraws the design of his character here in all the action, the madness and the clichés.

This is how Mädel succeeds in showing this Buba as what ultimately defines him: as a human being.

"Buba" on Netflix: In addition to Bjarne Mädel, Georg Friedrich and Maren Kroymann impress

And yet this is an ensemble film with a noticeable love and energy poured into all the characters.

Georg Friedrich turns Buba's brother Dante into an oily, sly little sausage who would love to be big in business.

Maren Kroymann hardly needs ten sentences to give her clan boss Doro an aura of danger: Nobody eats cake as menacingly as Kroymann in this role.

As Jule, Anita Vulesica not only gives Buba a stab in the heart, and Michael Ostrowski once again refines the art of designing seemingly small roles.

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Wonderful as always: Maren Kroymann, who plays the clan boss Doro in "Buba".

© Bernd Spauke/Netflix

The part that Yoshi Heimrath has in the success of this film should not be underestimated.

He was happy to change the lenses of his camera and thus found a look that was still courageous for German productions because it was unusual.

"Buba" skilfully jumps between fish-eye perspective and panorama shots.

The Munich native, who used the camera for "Berlin Alexanderplatz" (2020), for example, knows how to create the ideal images to tell the story - and it's sometimes as distorted as Buba's view of himself.

He once said that his grandmother told him that life was like in a fairy tale.

"Just as cruel." But we now know: the old woman had no idea.

This life is great fun.