Watch Germany: A Summer's Fairytale For Free

Too many fans seem to be blown away

I wanted to but couldn't!

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

In summer, I watched the World Championship with enthusiasm. Having heard that director Sönke Wortmann were with the German team and would make a movie, I was really interested and expected fascinating impressions "from back office". But the result is disappointing: Jürgen Klinsmann is shouting and motivating the team all the time, the players are really engaged, joking around or answering simple questions and the games are repeated once again in short versions with all goals. But there are no views on the players' relations (except the competition between Lehmann and Kahn), moments of conflicts or controversies have found no way into the movie (perhaphs, there was nothing than harmony...) and no one in the film is really portrayed as an individual. The movie is an documentary which could have been made by any DFB official (German Football Association) who wants to produce a big seized promotion video. Maybe, Sönke Wortmann earns enough money to work on a better movie in the following time...

I think this documentary is very typical of Germans in particular and of people in general. Now, we have all seen the national team play the World Cup and we were very satisfied with the outcome of the tournament (funnily enough, when Germany made runner's up in 2002, people weren't as frantic about Germany and the German team as they are now, after the World Cup 2006 IN Germany). And when I watched the matches, I observed the unaggressive and unobtrusive birth of what news magazines called the NEW NATIONALISM. I didn't really take part in this, but I didn't mind it either (I just thought: Oh, O.K. why not, after fifty years of forbidden patriotism, let the baby have his bottle).But this documentary is overdoing it a bit. First of all, I didn't like Sönke Wortmanns DAS WUNDER VON BERN, because it was way too corny as a movie and it didn't discuss the controversial link between German soccer and German nationalism shortly after WWII at all (For example, it didn't mention how Peco Bauwens, the head of the German soccer association, held a speech just after Germany won the World Cup in 1954, talking about the connection between physical education and nationalism in a way you'd probably only expect it from someone like Hitler).And now this: A film that takes us on a trip into the locker room for the one and only reason to satisfy our curiosity. We don't really learn anything new about the strategy of coach Jürgen Klinsmann or about the physical part of soccer. This documentary quenches nothing but our thirst for the invasion of privacy. In a way, it is not very different from Big Brother: We do not satisfy ourselves any longer with seeing our soccer players on the field, no, we have to follow them everywhere: into the locker rooms, into the hallways of the stadiums' catacombs, everywhere! I still don't understand why the soccer players let Wortmann invade their privacy to such an extent. I can only think of two reasons: money and vanity! And Wortmann is a copycat, too. He knew that a French director had had an incredible success doing a documentary on the French team in 1998, when the French won the World Cup. He knew that a lot of money was to be made on such a documentary, and that this was an opportunity he couldn't miss.Now, I know that people are going to say: If you are so against it, why did you go and see it. The reason is: I am like everyone else. Sometimes when I go shopping I look at all these magazines such as GALA, BUNTE and so on (For the non-German readers: these are magazines that solely discuss the private life of celebrities or wannabe celebrities), and I catch myself reading or leafing through one or two of them. It's the same mechanism that comes into play when you witness a car accident: You look! You watch the ambulance, the casualties, the police, because you are so unbelievably curious. And this very same mechanism made me watch this documentary. I watched it out of pure curiosity, but I didn't really learn anything watching it. And, on me,it had the same effect as a car accident: I felt ashamed of my curiosity!

I remember watching sort of a similar movie concerning France winning the WC in 1998. It was a phenomenal movie and I thought, french players are something special in terms of still being in a "growing-up" phase, making fun with others and just having a good time while earning their money.This movie is great, it reveals, that all of this guys, even though most of them a millionaires, are still humans, who live their life like u and me. Although I am half German too, I never thought my fellow men could behave like the multicultural team of France, but they do ! I think u get a great view of the German Team, if u don't already know it. If you watch this movie, i think you will understand, why this Team had such a great success. Wortmann shows and mixture of guys, who perfectly match up. Young guns like Schweinsteiger and Podolski, making jokes all the time, just like the young boys do, when I go out of my house and ol' "rabbits" (Thats the way we call it in Germany) like Nowotny and Kahn, supporting the Team whenever they can.The movie makes you feel connected to these guys, because it takes away some prejudices and wipes away the cut and dried opinions of them working wonders. Jürgen Klinsmann puts up the same statements like a 7th league coach, talking to a defender ("He will smell your breath all the time, Arne!").In a nutshell, after watching the movie, I think if I would meet Podolski on the street court next to my house, and if he really had time for it, he would never reject playing some One on One soccer games with me and joking about passing girls ..

Wortmann's "Deutschland. Ein Sommermärchen" does not really contain anything you would've missed watching the World Cup on TV (in Germany), it does not contribute additional in-depth information about tactics or any other part of the German team's methods - yet it does a good job at summing up an event millions won't forget. Its arguably strongest scene is right at the beginning, showing the team crushed in the dressing room right after losing the semi-finals to Italy. Other than that it follows the German team throughout the 2006 World Cup, showing many nice anecdotes and avoiding any criticism of the team itself, true to Klinsmann's spirit.