Maybe... Maybe Not

Axel does well with women and badly with fidelity. When his girlfriend Doro catches him with another woman in a toilet, she throws him out. With nowhere to sleep, he moves in with Norbert, whom he met the same day. Norbert is gay and in love with him. That is how the flatshare starts, and it gets considerably worse once Doro turns out to be pregnant. The comedy runs on misunderstanding, but the interesting part is who ends up looking foolish: always the straight man. All of Axel's discomfort comes from his own insecurity, and the film makes him pay for it repeatedly. Sonke Wortmann directed, from Ralf Konig's comics Der bewegte Mann and Pretty Baby. Til Schweiger plays Axel and Katja Riemann plays Doro. The result in Germany was enormous: more than six and a half million admissions and sixty million marks. In 1994 only The Lion King and Forrest Gump beat it there. One criticism belongs here too: the sources are two gay comics, and the film is angled at straight couples. Who it is for: anyone curious about nineties German mainstream comedy. Who it is not for: anyone with no patience for the period's sense of humour. Some jokes have plainly aged, and Norbert serves Axel's story right to the end.