European Union Film Festival Review: Oh Boy (2012)

Cast: Tom Schilling, Katharina Schüttler, Justus von Dohnányi
Director: Jan Ole Gerster
Country: Germany
Genre: Drama
Official Website: Here

Editor’s Notes: The following article is part of our coverage for the 9th Annual European Union Film Festival which runs from November 14th to 27th at Toronto’s Royal Cinema.  For more information on the festival visit eutorontofilmfest.ca and follow the European Union Film Festival on Twitter at @EUFFToronto

There’s a sense throughout Oh Boy, a film about a shiftless twenty-something not exactly sure who or what he wants to be, that the film shares its protagonist’s uncertainty. Sometimes, the film is a laid-back hangout movie, sometimes it plays more like social farce, and occasionally it strains for deeper meaning. What results is a fitfully fun, occasionally moving, ultimately fairly messy film without an idea of its purpose or even its tone.

Sometimes, the film is a laid-back hangout movie, sometimes it plays more like social farce, and occasionally it strains for deeper meaning.

The film follows Niko (Tom Schilling), a guy in his late twenties, a college drop out living off of the money he gets from his father, who thinks he is still paying for the boy’s education, and mostly just drifting aimlessly through his life. We follow him through a particularly eventful day as he ends a relationship, weathers a psychiatric hearing in an attempt to regain his driver’s license, visits a movie set, plays golf with his father, sees some friends, goes to an avant garde performance and tries, desperately, to find a simple cup of coffee.

Sometimes the film feels like it is attempting to force Niko to change or evolve, to confront the consequences of his detachment and indecisiveness and to grow up. Yet often throughout, it feels more like a German riff on Curb Your Enthusiasm, as Niko is forced into some very uncomfortable social situations and tries to make the best of them, often failing miserably. Watching him try to steal back the change he has given a sleeping homeless man when he realizes his credit card has been cancelled, or his attempts to get out of several very awkward situations with any shred of dignity intact, can be very funny indeed.

This isn’t to say Oh Boy has no redeeming qualities. There’s a playfulness to a lot of the film that, if not always outright hilarious, is at least fairly amiable. Sometimes it hits on something that works, whether it’s the coffee gag, which pays off over time and resolves with a surprising amount of resonance…

Yet Niko himself remains somewhat out of reach, almost a cipher standing in for quarter-life crisis malaise more than an actual human being. Because he lacks a strong point of view, a lot of the farcical elements can fall flat (imagine a completely unopinionated Larry David at the center of Curb, and you might imagine how many sequences here play out), and the deeper issues the film wants to address never fully coalesce. Niko needs to work as a character before we can put his flaws into focus and care about whether he overcomes them. He’s so affectless and uninterested, he occasionally becomes uninteresting, a hole at the center of a film that spends almost no time with anyone else. Every other character is a supporting player to a guy who would fade into the background if the camera ever lost focus on him for a second.

This isn’t to say Oh Boy has no redeeming qualities. There’s a playfulness to a lot of the film that, if not always outright hilarious, is at least fairly amiable. Sometimes it hits on something that works, whether it’s the coffee gag, which pays off over time and resolves with a surprising amount of resonance, or a monologue delivered at Niko in a bar that attempts to encapsulate the passage of time, as an old man looks back on fond memories and regrets. It feels a little dropped in to provide the film a climax and to potentially push Niko towards a resolution, but in and of itself, the scene is a lovely evocation of a life recalled, played with a wonderful mixture of humor and melancholy. If the rest of the film had managed that balance, or even seemed committed to any particular tone, viewpoint, or even a strong central character, it might have been something special. Instead, Oh Boy is occasionally entertaining, fitfully interesting, and ultimately somewhat unsatisfying.

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Jordan Ferguson

Sr. Staff Film Critic

Jordan Ferguson is a lifelong pop culture fan, and would probably never leave his couch if he could get away with it. When he isn’t wasting time “studying the law” at the University of Michigan, he writes about film, television, and music. In addition to writing for Next Projection, he is the Editor-in-Chief of Review To Be Named, a homemade haven for pop-culture obsessives. Check out more of his work at Reviewtobenamed.com , follow him on twitter @bobchanning, or just yell really loudly on the street. Don’t worry, he’ll hear.

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