This is my first movie that I watched from Fatih Akin. Shame on me! I am deeply impressed his innocent language in telling the story of two boys and the other characters. Tschick (Goodbye Berlin) tells a very ordinary story around two teenagers with an amazing beautiful way. I think that the success of the movie is not trying to tell the story from an adult view, on the contrary, telling like a teenager who talks about what happened during the last summer. The tune between sadness and happiness is very balanced. I like movies that not trying to exploit / (ab)use audience's weak points and Tschick (Goodbye Berlin) is also not trying to do this and set the audience free. For me, the main outcome (if we need a message from every movie that we watched) is "to be yourself" and "to accept life and people around you as well as yourself". There are many upsetting around two boy characters but all are experienced not in a melodramatic way but very truthful way like all we experienced when we were young. Anand Batbileg (Tschick) and Tristan Göbel (Maik) play their role perfectly. As I was watching the movie, I have never thought on their performances as "Oh no it is too exaggerated way" or "they are short for the role". I like this movie. It is honest, cheerful, hopeful and very very sentimental. I like sentimental laughter. (*) Mylast note for the admin. It is not possible to write Fatih Akin's surname in its original way. In Turkish we have small "I" and this field doesn't accept it. His surname is not written with "i" but with small "I". You may need fixing this. Thank you!

As a native speaker, I read the book several times, found it splendid, so I HAD to see that movie. Weired enough that film contains everything a great movie should have: great soundtrack, good camera, nice sets, wonderful surrealistic takes of the empty landscapes and the highway. I mean, road movie, what can go wrong? Anyway I realized that I was bored already after the first minutes. It's simply bad acting and bad timing. The main actors Göbel (Maik) and Batbileg (Tschick) seem to be selected only by appearance, their dialogues stuck and stumble, no timing at all, face expressions stay the same all the time, what could be funny stays dead, learned by heart directly from the text book and that's it.Every scene is translated directly from the book, there are only minor changes (which not all of them I understand, so why is Maik sketching Tatjana, and not Beyoncé; why is the original joke with the maths test messed up etc.). Anyway, every scene ends up in a kind of faithfully following the book. You sit there and tick off unconsciously "well, now this episode is done, okay, now follows this one, good, next comes that...." - But you never submerge in that movie; the original feeling of ultimate freedom, fun and surrealistic humor is totally absent! I really don't understand why the movie gets good ratings everywhere. It's no bad substance, but it totally misses the goal.

German road movie about two teenage boys going on German roads during summer vacations. It is a simple movie but very well executed and with a great cast. It makes you want to become young and fearless again, nostalgia, nostalgia, always a powerful sentiment. In background it tackles important topics including dysfunctional families and races.

"Tschick" is a German-language movie from this year and the newest Bork by successful Turkish/German filmmaker Faith Akin. He has not yet made a kids movie in his career and even if this one here is certainly also a film for grown-ups, the focus is still on two teenage boys and their time on the road. This one here is really the epitome of a kids-oriented road movie. Both boys are somewhat outsiders, but they join forces and spend the most interesting summer holidays one can imagine. This especially refers to Maik as he is really the central character here in the story. The film starts with him and ends with him and we also find out a lot more about his life, his parents, his love interest etc. compared to Tschick. It takes us two thirds into the film to even get to know about Tschick's sexual identity while we learn about Maik's crush in the very first minute of the film. The lead actor here is Tristan Göbel and he has worked in a solid deal of films already given his age, certainly pretty experienced for a 14-year-old boy. The actor who plays the title character (Anand Batbileg) may be the exact opposite almost as, apparently, he is still a rookie when it comes to acting and performing.But that is perfectly fine as these slightly over 90 minutes here are much more about the story and also the coming-of-age than about individual performances. And if you hear about this subject, then you will not be surprised to see Hark Bohm working on the screen play as the topic of coming-of-age was also very present in his most known works, even if they are already from several decades back. His adoptive son Uwe also acts in here. Speaking about the cast, you will find several somewhat known names appearing in here, even if they (like Friederike Kempter for example) only play very small roles. The only ones with more screen time are the actors who play the protagonist's parents and like others these are familiar faces too, at least to German movie buffs, even if I only recognized the father. You may not know the names, but you may know the people who act in there and realize that you have seen their faces in several other works. Then again, it's not really important who they are. What is much more important is that Akin once again brings us a convincing work and you can describe pretty much all of his works as bold and relevant, even if you are age-wise and society-wise far away from the main characters. Finally, he has shown us that he can delivers also in terms of children's films, a genre that is truly popular right now. This one here, based on the novel by late writer Wolfgang Herrndorf, is definitely worth seeing. I recommend you check it out.