The blockbuster of the season is called “Bond's Daughter”! It deals with a formula for a killer virus once developed by 007S Eternal Nemesis Blofeld, which only affects farm animals and puts an end to the fact of factory farming. “The Future is vegan,” knows the new shooting star Justine Laser (Kathrin Laser), because she is responsible for directing and script of the upcoming megahit. Now she advertises the vegan lifestyle into every camera – and only speaks English on principle, even if it used to be called “Bambi” and actually comes from Heidelberg. And that with the authorship does not quite go there, but her ex-boyfriend Casper (Timo Jacobs) actually wrote the script and only gave it to her back then-before the separation and Justine move to her aunt to Hollywood. Of course, Casper is almost getting stuck in the “vegan” currywurst when he learns that “Bond's Daughter” is actually turned off and is to be awarded the European Film Award in Reykjavik.
Without further ado accompanied by his best friend Max (Max Bertani), Casper heads from Berlin to Iceland to confront his pasted people and to accommodate his own name in the credits. However, Casper is first sent on tour with the main actress Katlyn Cesta (Gaia Arellano Reynoso) by the eel-glatted producer Uwe Jordan (Uwe Kamitz), and this is supposedly prevented at the premiere party, but this is prevented by a dose of K.-O. Drops. When Casper wakes up from fainting, Justine has long since left – but that is far from being given up, and so the two friends take the next plane to Los Angeles. And there it finally gets out of the edge and band, because on every corner the title -giving high trucks (and also a few ponies) seem to be lurking …
In La, Casper (Timo Jacobs) and Max (Max Bertani) are waiting for the return of Justine – and enjoy the good weather in Hollywood.
At the eternal rebel of German film, Klaus Lemke, the director, producer, leading actor and screenwriter (hopefully really) from “Highlocks and ponies“, Timo Jacobs, in” Take a dream on, Julia! ” For the first time in front of the camera. As is well known, Lemke preferred to work with amateur actors far from the usual acting craft – and his discovery of Jacob fell in love with the magic of filmmaking so much that he then remained in business: In the meantime, he not only shoots with numerous German directors such as Thomas Arslan, Christoph Hochhäusler or RP Kahl, but also with international icons such as Spike Lee (“Buffalo Soldiers '44 – The Miracle of St. Anna ”) or Olivier Assayas (“ Carlos – The Schakal ”).
For more than a decade now, Jacobs, moreover, have continued the legacy of the Lemke, who died in 2022, by repeatedly stepping behind the camera to make small, stubborn films, completely independent. So also past the German film funding, because Lemke had once liked to be responsible for the death of German cinema. And in fact you may not really imagine what would be left of “high -stapler and ponies” if Jacobs would have given the certainly chaotic script in half a dozen support bodies. It would have been crushed, if not even directly and even directly, to the trash.
Cojak – without K, but with Lolli
Because in Jacobs' fourth cinema film there is all sorts of things in it, which does not really fit together and it shouldn't necessarily. In Hollywood, Casper and Max end up in the villa of Justines Aunt, where they are looked after with the responsible task, to thoroughly clean the anus thoroughly to the title -giving dwarf ponies who live there as pets. And then Casper also becomes a suspect when Katlyn is found dead and the investigating Cop Cojak (Michael Rubin) booked him up directly. In fact, not everything works from these rather heterogeneous set pieces, and in the second half, “high -stapler and ponies” also drags a few lengths away. But it is still nice that there is this film and that Timo Jacobs did it as it is.
In general, it seems a little as if it could hardly exist in the decades of German independent cinema that Jacobs' teacher Lemke has probably dreamed long. Dominik Graf, another old master of the German (TV) film, is currently demanding vehemently: it has never been as easy and as inexpensive to make films as it is today. Instead of waiting for the slow mills and the funds of the conveyor system, you should simply go out on the street and turn, without a budget and without a thousand permits, guerrilla style. This is the only way to create the fresh wind, which everyone always tends in the German cinema.
Pets à la Hollywood: where a sheep and a dwarf pony play keyboard together …
In fact, films such as this, or with the pubs and fairground stories of a Dominik Galizia (“Rock 'N' Roll Ringo”), can currently be felt an ambition to tell stories of other figures than the one that we otherwise see in German cinema. These are not without precedence, we have only been able to see them for an eternity.
The Laconian Deadpan humor, with which Jacobs sends his deliberately undynamic duo from Konnopke's snack bar via Iceland to Hollywood, for example of the early, northern German comedies of a Detlev Buck, even if “Hochstapler and Ponys” then rather the slacker comedy variation on RP Kahls Californian Art cinema hole ride “A Thought of Ecstasy” developed. And in the end, it always remains unpredictable enough in their lengths to keep the interest awake – and to arouse the desire to stop by again and again in the sloping cinema mosm of Timo Jacobs.
Conclusion: Not everything on the fourth directorial work by the independent director Timo Jacobs really works, but this is definitely ready to forgive this film, often funny and noticeably staged with a lot of passion and cinema love. In the footsteps of Klaus Lemke and Detlev Buck, Jacobs sends a slacker duo to a laconic world trip from Berlin to Reykjavik to Hollywood, roams different genres and may take a little too much time for it. But it is good that there are films like this in German cinema and many people should see him.