Jakob 'Buba' Otto lives with his brother Dante in a small town in Northern Germany, working as a hopeless stuntman and also taking the fall for his scheming brother in all manner of petty thefts and swindles. He has gone through life in the belief, since their parents' death when they were children, that any time he experiences pleasure or happiness, others will suffer instead. So he actively seeks out whatever will cause him the most pain possible and is thus constantly a shuffling bag of cuts and bruises. Things get even worse when his brother has them join the local mafia as enforcers, with the promise that they can finally make enough sponds to go to Disneyland in California.
For most of the way, with the hapless Jakob soldiering on through countless torments in the good-hearted delusion that otherwise he'll lose his brother too, it works pretty well as a black comedy, peppered with references to Titanic and the brutal German fairytales they were told as children, and the repeated refrain that only the Disney versions end happily. Unfortunately, this also means that the plot no longer knows either how to tie things up happily and so it eventually turns into an all-out bloodbath of gang warfare, losing sight of what charm it had built up.
It's actually a prequel to a three-season TV series, How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast), so may well serve best as a primer for anyone to decide whether the series will be their bag. As a standalone film in itself, you could do worse if you fancy a thrown-together mash-up of Guy Ritchie and Jean-Pierre Jeunet and have a strong stomach.
5/10
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