Single By Contract
Single By Contract
| 10 October 2010 (USA)
Single By Contract Trailers

A love connection clicks for Lila when she moves back to Berlin and meets Christopher -- never realizing that she's fallen for a rock star who's signed a contract to remain single for life.

Reviews
Horst in Translation ([email protected])

"Groupies bleiben nicht zum Frühstück" or "Single by Contract" is a German 100-minute movie from 2010, so it's already over 5 years old. The two female script writers (Henn and Schmidbauer, they worked together on several occasions and this was their first full feature film) are not known to me really, but director Marc Rothemund is certainly known in Germany. He worked on the Oscar-nominated "Sophie Scholl" and on other fairly famous films like "Harte Jungs". But this film here is definitely not his greatest achievement. It is the story of a young woman who returns from having spent one year abroad and she does not know about a fairly famous band in Germany. She falls in love with the lead singer and everybody knows who he is except our main character of course. The situations and explanations where she closely misses the signs and events when we find out how famous he is are really embarrassing sometimes and it starts right away with the airplane and the television show in there while the main character is sleeping.She is played by actress Anna Fischer and this is one of her most known works for sure, probably the one that is most known which has her play the main character. Sadly, her performance here is quirky, but really forgettable in terms of range. Her male co-lead Kostja Ullmann is usually a pretty weak actor, but here he is slightly better than in his other projects. Does not mean he is good though. The acting in this film is among the biggest weaknesses. Another weakness is the script. There are occasional moments that work well, basically all that have to do with the scenario of a girl falling in love with a big star, or also towards the end the fading popularity in this short-lived (when it comes to stardom) world. We see the main character's sister replace her old posters with new ones. But every time the film goes into detail, it all gets very messy. The dramatic events about arguments, people betraying each other as they fall for somebody else's crush never work at all and it just does not feel very authentic. The comedy is probably even worse on most occasions. This has to do on the one hand with the way it is written, on the other hand with the abysmal line delivery by some of the characters. One example would be towards the end one girl speaking about the open mouth of another girl from her class. That scene was really bad. Anyway, with a fairly absurd main plot like this one, you have to bring in lots of authenticity and realism on other occasions. This film does not. It goes for cheesy romance, predictable story-lines and sub-par (almost non-existing) character development. It is quite a failure overall and there are moments in this film that do not even deserve 4 stars out of 10. Overall, the script and acting sure needed better approaches. I don't recommend the watch. Thumbs-down.

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wvhaperen

Lila returns to Germany after a year in America, so she doesn't know that the cool boy she encounters on her first day back, is the lead singer of a popular band.Of course there are numerous bumps in the road for their relationship:the press,her classmates.The male lead actually does all the singing himself,and they even have a duet during the end credits. The story is entertaining, as good as most American teen movies, although it's a little more explicit in language being a European movie.I found this refreshing, most American teen movies are a little tame. The music is A-okay, the DVD has an English subtitle track, so all of you: import it to the States!Both lead actors are now big names in Germany and this movie was a huge hit. There are almost no faults in this movie (in my opinion anyway) so therefore it gets 9 out of 10.

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kosmasp

Do not be fooled by the title. This is not a documentary nor anything for a mature audience. Well anyone can enjoy it, I guess, but the movie aims at a younger core audience. Teens that is and especially women/girls of course.The main actress reminded me of a very young Nora Tschirner. She is sweet but still has fight in her. And has obviously her beauties. Though some might argue that she does talk too much. The plot though is very predictable and you do know where it's all going to end. Still Kudos for giving a character (bodyguard) more time on screen and more character beats than other movies would have done. Cheesy, but also adorable (in some strange ways)

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derhonk01

This movie is a pretty solid comedy. Nothing more and nothing less. The plot is very transparent and after the first 15 minutes you know pretty well how the story is gonnna unfold and how the movie is going to end. But nevertheless its fun. And after all that is all this flick wants to be. Its just good Entertainment for about 2 Hours. Granted its pretty shallow but if you just wanna be entertaint after a long and stressful day this movie will deliver. The actors are alright and there's a couple of really funny moments in the movie. Since its basically a teeny love story and Im well in my thirties I did not think that I was gonna be touched by the film. I was very surprised that even I had moments where I really felt with the characters and got dragged in by the story. Since its basically the old Cinderelly Story in a modern form (young girl finds her prince (in this case a musician), they fall in love and have to fight for her love (in this case against the management)), the movie probably aims mainly at girls from 10 to 16. But since its a pretty well crafted comedy I think that even people like me, who are way outside the target group, will enjoy this. Its definitely one of the better comedies from Germany.

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