Watching the German comedy/road movie Enlightenment Guaranteed is like watching somebody else's boring vacation videos.
The film tells how a couple of stumblebum middle-aged brothers -- Uwe and Gustav -- travel from Germany to Japan in order to meditate at a Buddhist monastery. Unfortunately, they promptly get lost and spend most of the movie on the streets of Japan, surrounded by a bewildering foreign culture of gaudy billboards, bizarre ATMs and strange fashions.
Enlightenment Guaranteed stars Uwe Ochsenknecht as depressing appliance salesman Uwe, whose wife has left him, and Gustav-Peter Wohler as the soft-spoken Gustav, who indulges in New Age practices like feng shui and, of course, meditation in a Buddhist monastery. They make a mildly amusing pair when they get lost and roam Tokyo in search of their hotel -- Uwe shoplifts a tent from under the noses of the courteous Japanese staff at a department store, while the panhandling Gustav belts out a German version of I Will Survive.
The film moves slowly along throughout the brothers' urban misadventures, but comes to a real thud when the pair finally find their way to the monastery. Here, they completely immerse themselves in the life of Buddhist monks as they try to achieve a sense of Zen serenity -- meaning scene after scene of Uwe and Gustav cleaning floors, eating soup, waking up early in the morning, having their backs whacked with a stick while they meditate, and so on. Will they be able to find meaning in their lives? Will you care?
It's also at this point that famed German director Doris Dorrie lurches into some very lazy filmmaking. Much of the grainy-looking Enlightenment Guaranteed is shot with a shaky hand-held camera, lending it even more of a sense of a home movie. But during the interminable final segment set at the monastery, Dorrie goes to the "video diary" well once too often, as Uwe and Gustav repeatedly confess their deepest thoughts into Uwe's video camera.
Enlightenment Guaranteed has a couple of small laughs and insights, but they're peppered far too sparsely throughout the film. Do yourself a favour and watch your own vacation videos -- you'll probably enjoy yourself a lot more.
(This film is rated PG)
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