The Real Life Guys make the seemingly impossible come true on their YouTube channel with around two million subscribers: Last June, like in the Pixar animated film “Up,” they created a boy and a (Styrofoam) house with the help of hundreds of helium balloons made to fly. But there's a sad truth behind the Real Life Guys' DIY dream machine.
Fans have known for a long time that only one of the twins Johannes and Philipp Mickenbecker, who founded the YouTube channel together with Eric Westphal in 2016, is still alive. Told about this tragic journey “Life is now – The Real Life Guys” directed by Maria Anna-Westholzer and Stefan Westerwelle. The film never becomes maudlin, but shows how close joy and suffering are to each other, often even taking place at the same time.
There is still a lot of tragedy to come for the Mickenbecker siblings – and yet “Life is Now – The Real Life Guys” does not let its optimism be taken away.
The fact that the feature film also has a missionary character seems strange when you watch it, but it is not surprising. The Real Life Guys are followers of an evangelical free church that is heavily recruiting members. The documentary “Philipp Mickenbecker – Real Life” (2023) about the last three months of the YouTube twin was already very converting with many songs about God and quotes about faith. Relatively at the end you see Philipp Mickenbecker bleeding on his deathbed. The feature film omits such drastic scenes. However, the faith aspect still plays a major role.
Philipps Mickenbecker's book “My Real Life Story – and the Thing with God” is one of the sources of inspiration for the script of “Life is Now – The Real Life Guys”. In the film, it is primarily the deeply religious mother (Victoria Mayer) who intersperses Christian messages (“Where the Lord is, there is freedom”), while the father (Alexander Hörbe) is more reserved.
How do you grieve “correctly”?
Philipp Mickenbecker finds comfort through faith in God – even when the Mickenbecker brothers' sister dies in a plane crash. So the question of faith becomes a major point of conflict between the two brothers. At the funeral, Johannes accuses Philip of not mourning his sister “properly”. They fight in church and later find their way back to each other. At the end of “The Real Life Guys” a website appears as a guide, which is intended to introduce young people to the faith. This mission is extremely irritating because “The Real Life Guys” is actually a classic coming-of-age story.
The focus of the feature film is the Mickenbecker twins Johannes (Anton Fuchs) and Philipp (Richard Fuchs) as well as their sister Elli (Kya-Celina Barucki), who grow up together in Bickenbach, Hesse. The twins are described by their sister, who can be heard off-screen at the beginning, as two people who probably “share a soul”. It is all the more tragic when one of them develops lymphatic cancer. Philipp Mickenbecker undergoes chemotherapy and makes a pact with his brother: From now on, they want to enjoy life so that every day is the best day again. Pretty soon the plan is to get others excited about crazy projects and put their DIY crafts on YouTube as “Real Life Guys” and representatives of “real life”. Then the cancer comes back…
After Philipp (Richard Fuchs) seemingly beats cancer, he founded the YouTube channel The Real Guys with his twin brother Johannes (Anton Fuchs).
One of the most striking scenes: At a surprise party for Johannes and Philipp, the twins find out that YouTube is interested in them. Her sister arranged the deal behind her back. While Philipp Mickenbecker confides in his girlfriend Nele (Samirah Breuer) that he has discovered another lump in his breast, his brother Johannes celebrates with his new love Ava (Janina Fautz) to driving electro beats. The images alternate. Nele takes Philipp in her arms to comfort him while Johannes dances wildly. He is happy.
This condensation of content happens several times, which is why the film never really dwells on one emotion for long. Almost every scene is accompanied by music, be it with a feel-good musical bed or serious piano music. There is hardly any space for the dialogues to stand on their own. This makes the film seem like a video stream for Generation Z: Inventive boys build a new vehicle for land or water using old bathtubs, parts of a washing machine or old bicycles. Highlights of the real Real Life Guys such as the bright yellow submarine made up of two bathtubs, the flying bathtub, motorized bobby cars and the roller coaster in the hardware store also appear in the form of YouTube snippets of the real Real Life Guys. You can easily distinguish them from the feature film snippets because the twins in the film don't look remotely like the real real life guys.
Contagious optimism
Director Stefan Westerwelle, who took over the project from original director Maria-Anna Westholzer, intensified the twin theme with some reshoots. The images from cameraman Martin Schlecht show the Mickenbeckers as a harmonious unit in a rural idyll, for example when harvesting. Unfortunately, the dubbing is poor, which is why the two actors lose credibility.
In contrast to the twins is Kya-Celina Barucki, who plays the curly-haired Mickenbecker sister Elli with great passion. At their last meeting she smiles. This confidence runs through the entire film thanks to Philipp Mickenbecker, who doesn't lose his optimism. In the final image, the Real Life Guys and their friends stand shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm on a mountain in Iceland. Together they are prepared for the next adventure.
Conclusion: Even if the “streaming look” gives the feature film little room for your own feelings, you can feel the “real life guy feeling” in which only the pure moment counts. This doesn't feel banal at all, but at least real. The film's missionary undertones, however, are at least strange.