With its star-studded circle of suspects, the modern Agatha Christie homage “Knives Out – Murder is a Family Affair” became a huge hit, grossing more than $310 million worldwide. Netflix smelled the potential – and reportedly shelled out a whopping $450 million (!) for the rights to two more whimsical cases by master detective Benoit Blanc (played by Daniel Craig). And indeed: “Glass Onion” and “Wake Up Dead Man” became, as expected, a hit on the streaming service – and were watched a total of several hundred million hours.
Of course, this success didn't go unnoticed by the competition – and so Amazon MGM Studios Germany is now relying on very similar ingredients for the much smaller budgeted murder mystery “Fabian and the Murderous Wedding”: a big house, a family celebration, a murder, an eccentric sleuth and lots of suspects from the hunchbacked relatives. The fairly entertaining crime comedy is tailored entirely to the playful and grimacing lead actor Bastian Pastewka. However, under the direction of “Murder with a View” director Markus Sehr, this is both a blessing and a curse.
Fabian (Bastian Pastewka) has to descend deep to reveal the truth.
When concluding a lucrative real estate deal in Vilnius, Lithuania, an imposter (Bastian Pastewka) is exposed at the last second. While escaping from an armed pursuer, he runs into a wedding party led by the newlyweds Milva (Tamara Romera Ginés) and Clemens (Anton Dreger). Without further ado, he pretends to be a photographer in order to escape with the invited guests on a bus to the celebration location in a remote mansion.
There, at a ceremony according to family custom, the bride is to bequeath the 40,000-year-old Venus of Wildenfeld from her aunt Nikola Wankdorff (Nicole Beutler), which not only arouses the desires of the greedy petty criminal. When a murder occurs and Venus is stolen, the con artist poses as police officer Fabian Kurtz in order to be able to search for the valuable piece of jewelry (and, if the worst comes to the worst, put it in his own pocket)…
Bastian Pastewka is the biggest trump card
As a cunning crook, Bastian Pastewka reluctantly slides ever deeper into a tricky crime puzzle with family conflicts between jealousy, money worries and snobbish contempt. At the beginning, during a bumpy chase on foot, the unsportsmanlike nature of the retro-savvy comedian and TV nostalgic clearly shines through, which he tries to cover up with an idiosyncratic jiggling around that is vaguely reminiscent of the Monty Python gag about the “Ministry of Silly Gangs”. But Pastewka quickly sheds this (deliberate?) awkwardness – instead he manages to take over the film with some of his windy character's particularly strange quirks.
With hilarious nonchalance, he repeats well-known crime phrases from film and television at the crime scene – and not only improvises more and more brazenly when inventing a supposed special unit, before he turns out to be downright jumpy the next moment. It's just a shame that his observations and insights as Fabian Kurtz are so casual and unexciting for the audience, without ambiguous twists and turns, that the fun of puzzling along is rather manageable until the 20-minute resolution. The density of gags in the script by the quartet of authors around Judy Horney (“Charité”) is also rather low when Old Shatterhand is discussed and scores are leveled with hipsters – either permanently tired or superstitious would-be influencers.
Fabian proudly presents one of the many clues he comes across during his investigation.
Pastewka's strong presence in particular makes it extremely difficult for the other ensemble members, with their exaggerated and drawing-board-like characters, to leave a lasting impression in terms of acting. Ercan Durmaz, as a distrustful and hypocritical judge (quote from his wife: “Ghandi on the outside, Stalin on the inside”), is most likely to succeed in spicing up the scenario with (his own) character and belligerence.
“Fabian and the Murderous Wedding” was filmed in Lithuania and Latvia and impresses with its colorful costumes and lovingly furnished interiors. The production is clearly of high quality and elegantly equipped – and Bastian Pastewka is noticeably in his element almost 20 years after his last criminologist appearance in a full-length film (back then: “News from the Wixxer”). These two factors in particular make the otherwise somewhat shallow crime plot, which still has the potential for an entire film series, stand out from average TV fare.
Conclusion: “Fabian and the Murderous Wedding” is tailored entirely to Bastian Pastewka, who is in a good mood. Precisely because of its predominantly pale supporting characters, the tepid crime comedy cannot hold a candle to the (over)sized role model “Knives Out”.