A German-Jewish comedy may not sound like an everyday occurrence in the cinematic landscape, but it nevertheless is the only original thing about Alles auf Zucker! (Go for Zucker!), which apparently has the dubious honour of being the first of its kind since WWII. A smash hit at home, the mildly amusing antics of a German family reconnecting with their Jewish past in order to get an inheritance plays like My Big Fat Jewish Funeral and like that crowd pleaser is funny in a TV-film-of-the-week kind of way.

 

The Dani Levy-directed antics follow the down-on-his-luck Zucker (Henry Hübchen), who in his youth was split from his family and lived in East Germany while his mother and brother remained in the West when the Berlin Wall was closed. Becoming a fierce communist and renouncing his faith when left alone, all that is now left of him in his fifties is a wife who wants to throw him out and two grown up children who hardly feel any better about him. His only passion is playing pool, which leads him to lose money he does not have and creates a trail of creditors who haunt him, including his own son who might be gay -- or maybe not.

 

When at his most desperate, help seems to arrive in the form of a possible inheritance from Zucker’s mother, though she states in her will that he must reconcile with his orthodox brother whom he has not seen in years and observe the proper -- and very lengthy -- Jewish mourning rites. Zucker does not seem to be too concerned about his mother’s death, though to compensate he is very worried about having to house his brother’s family for 9 whole days and be a good Jew under the watching eye of his religious sibling as well as the local rabbi. Standard culture clash comedy fare ensues, especially between the two wives (Zucker’s spouse is not Jewish but has bought a self-help book to enlighten her on the Jewish ways) and the mixture of their rather promiscuous and orthodox offspring.

 

Originally written for the small screen, the film never truly gives up its TV origins in favour of a more cinematic approach. Though the pool scenes have some energy about them, the cinematography courtesy of Carl F. Koschnick (Agnes und seine Brüder/Agnes and His Brothers) is visually drab and seems inspired by TV sitcoms, a place that Levi also mined for comedic inspiration. The film is not as rampantly funny or original as Seres queridos (Only Human), the Spanish comedy in which a Jewish girl returns home to introduce her Palestinian boyfriend to her parents; Dani Levy's work is a lot more tame and leaves many possibilities for laughs unexploited, including a more astute explanation as to how Zucker’s brother (Udo Samel) has remained so orthodox (his niece calls him “Uncle Ayatollah”) despite living in the rich West. Written by the director with Holger Franke, Zucker is more often charming and chuckle-inducing rather than hilarious; what keeps the film from greatness is that it never sways to either straight-out farce (trading in character development for laughs like its Spanish colleague) or comedy with a heart. It is maneuvering the middle ground between the two leaves the film neither here nor there and as a result, its predictable ending is never really heartfelt and the film thus ends with a whisper rather than a roar.

 

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