Spoilers Alert:
A family made a film about a family in which most of the family members play themselves: it’s an interesting approach that enhances the authenticity of the story WE PARENTS approaches his viewers. But it’s not at all suitable for an entertaining cinema experience. We’ll tell you more about this in our review.
The Kamber-Grubers’ twin sons have no prospects.
If you want to argue that “We Parents” is particularly authentic because of this, you may not be wrong. However, for a film of this caliber, the documentary genre is much more suitable than the feature film, which in this case suffers from the lack of dramaturgy. In the figure drawing, “We Parents” reveals another major weak point. As written here, one relies on the greatest possible simplification within the characters. There is no such thing as good and evil, which the characters could be broken down into. This is not the case given the plot. The script also allows the parents to make mistakes, and the teens, who are already pushed into a one-sided troublemaker role, are allowed to have their own understandable problems and fears. Nevertheless, both parties remain completely one-dimensional, which is particularly not good for the supposedly universal perspective of parents: Vero and Michi literally wallow in self-pity, which means they lose the last remnants of sympathy from the audience – and thus do not reflect well on parents throw yourself.
“But why watch a family that has been described over and over again as “completely normal” squabbling at each other, when for many viewers this may not be that far away from reality – and which the other part is happy to deal with “Not having to fight something around?”
This is also due to the fact that both Eric Bergkraut and Elisabeth Niederer (“The cloud”) as well as the boys’ actors acting as if they were actually simply being filmed in their personal family life, is after all one of the big plus points of “We Parents”. Nevertheless, the ultimate question remains what the film is trying to achieve. You really don’t have to go to the cinema to get wise advice from family researchers and see what normal life is like for a stressful family.
Conclusion: As authentic as “We Parents” may depict the life of a Swiss family, Eric Bergkraut and Ruth Schweikert present their story in a less cinematic way. The film could also be a documentary. However, one about truly obnoxious people – and that doesn’t just apply to lazy children.
“We Parents” can be seen in selected USA cinemas from July 16th.
