Karl-Fred Mueller Movies

Helmer Michael Schorr's comedic follow-up to his arthouse hit Schultze Gets the Blues unfurls in a depressing, steel-skied Eastern Europe where strip mines and dilapidated buildings litter the Earth. In a little-known piece of land called the "Silesia" region, sandwiched snugly in between Russia, Poland, and the Czech Republic, a pie-in-the-sky dreamer named Frank Schröder (Peter Schneider) hatches an outrageous plan to turn the area into a Caribbean-themed tropical resort. He has financial backing, from a wealthy U.S. industrialist of Russian extraction named John Gregory (Jürgen Prochnow of Das Boot) -- but not the practical day-to-day support, for Gregory only wants to hunt wolves in the region and refuses to commit any time or solid attention to the project. Meanwhile, Schröder has bigger problems afoot when he realizes that he has no idea how to actually execute his plan, and then butts heads with a number of demanding dignitaries from the surrounding nations, including his own dad. A plethora of local eccentrics -- everyone from a nationalist called Uncle Wigbert to a taciturn and defiantly unamused groundskeeper -- only serve to complicate the situation. Per Cat Ballou and other films, Schorr has the picture's composer, Bernd Begemann, turn up from time to time with a guitar to sing humorous ballads commenting on the events of the story. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide