Did you ever think: let's take a great little German character/action film and remake it with lesbians to try to hide the fact that we are screwing up all the things that worked in the original and have no idea how to make a film with any energy at all? Well, the people who made this film did.
The story: Lola gets call from her girlfriend that her gf is at a meeting and needs her photos to get a gig and she needs undependable Lola to get them before the person leaves at five o'clock. So Lola runs out of the apartment and goes through wacky encounters trying to get the photos to her. But everything goes wrong. Then we are back at the start and we go through it all again, but with variations, seeing now a different side. And then we do it again.
So the movie this lamer is a rip off of is RUN LOLA RUN. If you haven't seen it -- see it! RUN LOLA RUN is absolutely worth watching. In fact, let me review that movie first:
The story: a girl gets a phone calls that her boyfriend lost some money he was supposed to deliver to drug dealers and she has to get $500K to him in an hour or they will kill him. She tries to get the money from her father, eventually robbing her own father and trying to get to her boyfriend. But she is too late. The bad guys shoot him. Dead. Then she wakes up back at the phone call and it starts again as she deperately tries to save him again...
The story is so simple and yet it is wonderfully well done. It the energy and urgency of an action film and yet using this look structure, it also gets to explore character. We see Lola (and her boyfriend) struggle with the seemingly impossible fate of her boyfriend's eventual death, trying to overcome their own bad decisions as they try to save him. Interspersed are the people Lola passes whose lives (fates) are shown to us through a series of still photos.
If you want something different, but want the energy of an action film, RUN LOLA RUN is a must see!
Now only the lame rip-off (with lesbians).
AND THEN CAME LOLA...wow. It's weird because you would think a movie that blantently rips off another movie so, well, blatently would at least be close to equal of the original. So where did they go wrong?
Well, first they changed it from more of an action/character film to a comedy. That in itself isn't bad -- I mean the same structure was used for GROUNDHOG'S DAY which was fantastic -- but it starts a series of bad decisions. First is the stakes. In the original it has Lola trying to save her boyfriend's life. In this one she is trying to get photos to her girlfriend so she can get a job. So what's the big deal about this job? Well, nothing as far as I can tell. And that's the problem -- there doesn't feel like there's anything at stake. Movies are driven by hope and fear. So we understand she would like to get the job, but if she doesn't...? So Lola's whole goal of delivering the photos seems bland. Now that could have been okay if they had bigger stakes for Lola -- for instance her gf thinks she is undependable and if she screws up one more time then her gf will leave her. Except that isn't set up well at all. There are places where it seems to go in that direction and others where it doesn't. Plus, the photos not being there isn't Lola's fault. The girlfriend was supposed to get them, but the shop was closed, then the business people pushed up the meeting. So even if Lola isn't able to get the photos to her gf, it's not like any of it is her fault. So, again, the movie feels like there just isn't anything at stake, which makes the movie feel very blah.
Added to this is the horrible directing. Now in most low budget movies, it's the acting that's bad, but here you have a premise about someone rushing to get these photos across town on time, and yet the movie has no energy at all. Part is the lack of stakes I mentioned, but the director again adds nothing, and not only doesn't add, didn't even copy from the original -- and you wuld think at they'd be trying to at least make it on par with the movie they are ripping off.
Interspersed with the running and photos Lola runs into an ex- and her current and the movie does seem to want to say something about love or relationships or something, but to be honest to story construction is so muddled that by the end instead of making a statement with some impact everything is just blah.
No stakes. No energy. No good.
*** (Run Lola Run) -- HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION ****
*** (And then Came Lola) -- AVOID ****
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