Wolfgang Niedecken is the German Bruce Springsteen, with the same range of material and the same celebrity, even though he sings in a dialect that is largely incomprehensible to anyone not from Cologne. The film is a homage to BAP (named for Niedecken's father - Bapp meaning father).
The film inadvertently maintains a tension between BAP's serious, lonely lyrics, the absurdity of singing a song in a language no one else understands, and a Cologne that it tries to portray as a serious, tragic, rebellious city, but the narrative never gets away from the mythic, folkloric Cologne that most Carneval-goers know. It is a very strange Carnevalesque.
The film seems to have been part of Niedecken's current attempts to establish his legacy, both by helping to launch younger musicians' careers and his personal and stage-personal love-affair with Cologne. Interestingly, it also skirts over the reasons behind BAP's failed tour of East Germany, which would have provided some negative balance to the story.
In 2003, the German Ministry of Culture showed this film in Washington, and Wolfgang Niedecken was there to provide commentary. The film was not heavily funded (the sweets' girl and the projectionist, for example, were supposed to mirror the Cologne fable of Jan and Griet, but they ran out of money and left the story undeveloped).
