Nonsense and the coati gang
Nonsense and the Coati is a German children's film from 2014 . The film combines elements from comedy, slapstick and musical . The film was directed by Veit Helmer and it was released on November 6, 2014.
action
The small town of Bollersdorf is a very ordinary place in the middle of Germany, where generations of children, parents and grandparents live together. One day the Society for Consumer Goods Research (GFK) declares the place to be the most normal and average place in Europe, the center of which it also represents. Bollersdorf is then declared a test site for new products. New products are being offered in local shops to test citizens' reactions to them. In the course of this, the adults of the place are instructed to behave normally, i.e. average. In Bollersdorf, for example, products such as green corn flakes, blue Nutella, coffee with a chilli flavor and a wide variety of new household appliances are being brought into the shops, and TV advertising is also being specially adapted for this location. The GFK establishes a headquarters in the village.
While the parents and the city council welcome the whole action and do everything they can to stay on average, the local grandparents and children, especially four-year-olds Rieke, Max, Lene, Paul, Suse and Ben and their coati nonsense, begin to oppose it protest. As a result, the grandparents are sent to an old people's home where they are to be immobilized. The children then get bored and want their grandparents, who were all inventors or discoverers, back in town. With the help of nonsense, they steal the book of records from the library and decide to set a record themselves in order to lift Bollersdorf out of the average. The first record attempts, namely the longest bratwurst, the heaviest fish and the fastest horse in the world fail because the children cheat and are blackened by the record committee. The children then think about inventions that could bring Bollersdorf out of the ordinary, such as a bread roll distribution machine, a direct milk line, a fire truck with sails or converting the garbage truck into a bicycle production facility.
In their grandparents' home, the children discover that they are being sedated with sleeping pills. They get a large amount of the medication and pour it into the local water reservoir, after which all adults in Bollersdorf fall into a deep sleep. The children want to use this time to build their inventions, but everything goes wrong. One after the other they hijack the garbage truck, the tractor, the train, the steamer, the fire engine and the crane of the village, but all vehicles are either tipped over or sunk in the lake, and finally the falling crane also destroys the GRP building.
Meanwhile, the grandparents wake up from their sleep and decide to help the children. Together they start to implement their ideas. When the parents finally wake up again, all things destroyed by the children have been repurposed. The overturned crane turned into a roller coaster, the steamer turned into a submarine, the tractor into a music machine, the railroad into an airplane and the garbage truck turned scrap metal into children's bicycles. The children's parents are more and more enthusiastic about these things, which the GFK is of course reluctant to see. Finally, the coati Quatsch appears, who has meanwhile constructed a strawberry milk shake machine from the local windmill, the milking facility and a cement mixer. Then Bollersdorf receives the official world record for the world's largest milkshake and thus escapes the average. The GFK is leaving the place, the grandparents are allowed to go back to their families and life in Bollersdorf continues, but much more exciting and crazy than before.
background
Director Helmer used the community of Haßloch in Rhineland-Palatinate as a model for the fictional town of Bollersdorf . Haßloch is used by real society as a test market for consumer research . As shown in the film, there are new products to be bought in local shops before they are launched, and there are also commercials produced especially for Haßloch on television.
According to his own account, Helmer developed the ideas for the plot of the film together with his then four-year-old son. According to his statement, it was his wish that "a fire truck, a tractor, a crane, a garbage truck, a cement mixer and a locomotive" appear in the film.
The shooting took place in Buckow, Brandenburg (Märkische Schweiz) .
reception
Nonsense and the coati gang was positively received by the critics. The editors of the website kino.de describe the film as a "candy-colored children's adventure", draw comparisons to the stories of Astrid Lindgren and the films of Harold Lloyd and draw the conclusion: "Long live the imagination: contagious cinematic nonsense with absurd humor." Christian Horn from the Internet portal Filmstarts describes nonsense and the coati gang as “imaginative”, “almost anarchistic and very excited”, “over-the-top children's film full of fantasy”. He emphasizes positively that “Veit Helmer shows no interest in pedagogical do-gooders”, only that the children's figures “hardly show any individual traits” is somewhat criticized. For Lars-Olav Beier from Spiegel , the film is a “wild and exuberant children's spectacle”, at times “sheer madness reigns”. Director Helmer reminds the audience of "how much cinema owes to childish imagination".
Awards
Nonsense and the coati gang received nominations in 2014 for the Golden Spatz and in the children's film category at the Munich Film Festival . In 2015, nominations for the German Film Critics' Prize and the German Film Prize followed , and Veit Helmer and Hans Ullrich Krause were nominated for the Children's Tiger Screenplay Prize.
At the Festival of German Films 2014, Quatsch and the Coati gang was awarded the Golden Nile. In the same year, the film won the audience award at the Zurich Film Festival and was given the rating of particularly valuable by the German Film and Media Assessment . At the Munich Film Festival 2015, the film received the Children's Media Prize The White Elephant .
Web links
- Nonsense and Nasenbärbande in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for nonsense and the coati gang . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2015 (PDF; test number: 143 397 V).
- ↑ Susanne Burg: “You don't trust children anymore to watch real film”. In: full screen. Deutschlandradio Kultur, November 22, 2014, accessed on April 4, 2018 .
- ↑ Christian Schröder: When snot noses save the world. Der Tagesspiegel, November 6, 2014, accessed April 4, 2018 .
- ↑ Nonsense and the coati gang. kino.de, accessed on April 4, 2018 .
- ↑ Christian Horn: Nonsense and the coati gang. filmstarts.de, accessed on April 4, 2018 .
- ↑ Lars-Olav Beier: The magic of the coati. Der Spiegel, November 6, 2014, accessed April 4, 2018 .
- ↑ a b Nonsense and the coati gang. Crew United, accessed April 4, 2018 .