"Die Geschichte vom Brandner Kaspar" is a German film from 2008, so it will soon have its 10th anniversary. The director is successful German filmmaker Joseph Vilsmaier and the script comes from Klaus Richter who adapted the work by Kurt Wilhelm, the screenplay writer from the 1970s version of this film. The twp most known actors of the cast here are lead actor Franz-Xaver Kroetz and Michael "Bully" Herbig who actually plays the Grim Reaper in here, but a somewhat funny version of it as usual with Bully. Kroetz and Herbig are also the only reasons to see this film here I guess that runs for slightly over 90 minutes. They have decent chemistry together and the scenes when they share the screen are the best this film has to offer. All the human supporting characters are mostly uninteresting in my opinion and don't really add a whole lot to the story.
In the second half this film about a man who tricked Death becomes slightly supernatural as we see Death's workplace and his colleagues, so you could maybe also call it a fantasy film. I may be a bit biased as I have never been a huge Vilsmaier fan, but he also could not win me over with this more recent work. There are a couple good moments like the scenes with the protagonists I mentioned earlier and Knaup is nice to watch as always, this time in a fairly unusual role. But I must say I would not have missed anything really if this film had ended as a fairly long short film after the scene when he tricked Death and went out laughing and singing. But it did not and the result were quite a few scenes that dragged and I as the viewer was bored. It may also help if you get subtitles, even as a German, as the Bavarian accents (as always with Vilsmaier) are pretty heavy and frequent. I give this fairly new "Brandner Kasper" version a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
In the second half this film about a man who tricked Death becomes slightly supernatural as we see Death's workplace and his colleagues, so you could maybe also call it a fantasy film. I may be a bit biased as I have never been a huge Vilsmaier fan, but he also could not win me over with this more recent work. There are a couple good moments like the scenes with the protagonists I mentioned earlier and Knaup is nice to watch as always, this time in a fairly unusual role. But I must say I would not have missed anything really if this film had ended as a fairly long short film after the scene when he tricked Death and went out laughing and singing. But it did not and the result were quite a few scenes that dragged and I as the viewer was bored. It may also help if you get subtitles, even as a German, as the Bavarian accents (as always with Vilsmaier) are pretty heavy and frequent. I give this fairly new "Brandner Kasper" version a thumbs-down. Not recommended.