Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"Knallharte Jungs" is a German movie from 2002 and the sequel to the very successful (at the box office, not with critics) film "Harte Jungs". The writer and director is Granz Henman and he was also the writer of the very first. And while his effort there was at least occasionally bearable, this one here isn't at all. It seems that Rothemund (the director of the first) understood that a sequel may be a bad idea and abandoned the project. On an equally sad note, this movie here is slightly longer than the first. Tobias Schenke and Axel Stein return, but Schenke's character's best friend / love interest from the first film has equally disappeared just like Mina Tander's character as well. Instead, his new woman of choice is played by Diana Amft. If you have seen Amft in "Mädchen, Mädchen" or anything, you will know that she is not a talented actress at all, yet next to Schenke she really shines despite being very mediocre again too. And Axel Stein, who is dressed in drag for almost the entire movie, is a true revelation next to the unbearably bad Rebecca Mosselmann. No surprise nobody heard from her again after this film. But maybe I am also doing some of the actors injustice here because one of the main reasons (next to their lack of talent) is the horrible script.At least you could say about the first film that luckily it never took itself serious, but this one here does with Schenke's character constantly talking about his true love while he almost gets raped by nymphomaniac nurses and aunts, all of them pretty hot which of course was intended to lighten up the situation. Oh yeah, his talking dick is back again as well and adds nothing to the film once again. This is one of the few aspects that did not get considerably worse here because it already really sucked in the original movie. On a more positive note, I can see somehow why Stein was a big breakthrough artist back then at that point as he occasionally managed the impossible, namely making Henman's script funny on 2 or 3 occasions. I also liked how it is not revealed eventually that he was his sister in drag. Oh well, these girls were really retarded to not see it but yeah.. Besides that, the film uses more stereotypes and embarrassingly bad sex jokes (melted ice cream on pants for example) than Mario Barth. And the production values are very weak too in general. We hear that the protagonist should take care of a 99-year-old woman and she looks no day older than 65 and the actress who played her was still much younger. We get cameos by Axel Milberg, Bully Herbig and Christine Neubauer, who for a rare occasions is not the one ruining a movie. This one does it all by itself. There should never have been made a second film and probably there should not have been made a first film either. Impressive how they managed to make this one even worse looking at how weak the original already was. Stay far far away.
