"Maria, ihm schmeckt's nicht!" is a dramedy directed by Neele Leana Vollmar based on Jan Weiler's novel. He also plays a small role as a marriage registrar here. Vollmar has received quite some recognition for her short film "Meine Eltern" before making this movie. The two lead performances come from Christian Ulmen and Mina Tander. Lino Banfi plays the biggest supporting role and also gave my favorite performance. His character's wife is played by Maren Kroymann who I knew from the very funny sitcom "Mein Leben & Ich". I personally thought Banfi gave the most memorable performance. However, Ulmen and Tander got the most awards recognition, which especially baffled me as I found Tander's performance very forgettable. Ulmen is fine, but plays his usual shtick, a likable chaotic male with relationship struggles.This film really only worked in the first half for me, where it was a comedy about multicultural issues and culture clashes when a German intends to marry a Girl who is half-Italian. The second half is much more dramatic with their marriage at stake, which did not feel credible to me at all. The flashback scenes to the life of Banfi's character as an immigrant decades ago coming from Italy to Germany. we see his struggles, but it did not impress me much. And the repetitive "genepool of insane people" commentaries with the whole dramatic music are just ridiculous in a bad way. This film tries to be much more than it actually was and the dramatic side was fairly disappointing. I also have a hate-love with the film's title. It is a quote from when the bride's family has a great meal and they say something like that the husband does not like the meal. In a certain way, it describes the whole approach of Ulmen's character to this Italian mentality, but somehow I feel they could have come up with a better title.Due to its weak second half, I would only really recommend this movie to Italians living in Germany. However, the landscapes are pretty nice as well as the film plays almost entirely in the Italian countryside. I also liked the song by Sportfreunde Stiller during the closing credits. It's not a great song in German, but singing it in Italian adds some charm to it. Anyway, about the movie, I really wish they would have stayed on the comedy path for its whole 90 minutes, maybe even for 75 minutes if they did not have the material for another 15. As a drama, this did not work at all.

Sara, the German daughter of an Italian immigrant has no problem in asking Jan to marry her. Jan, a serious young man, is only too happy to oblige. Antonio, Sara's father is delighted to hear the news, but he only desires to have the wedding in Campobello, the town where he comes from in Southern Italy. His wife, Ursula, does not mind as are the parents of the groom, both lovers of Italian culture. So what could go wrong? Well, everything!What appeared to be a simple wedding begins taking a different aspect as Jan begins to experience the local color and bureaucracy. What seemed so simple back in Germany turns into a living nightmare as the Italian relatives try to do things the only way they know by complicating what should have been a happy time for everyone. The unhappy Jan gets much more than what he bargained for. His new Italian relatives will do everything in their power to make him think twice in what he is getting into.Based on a novel by Jan Weiler, who adapted the material with Daniel Speck, the film was directed by Neele Leana Vollmar. The film is funny with hilarious situations mainly provided by the Italian cast. The contrast between the organized Germans and the noisy and disorganized counterpart, provides situations that ring true as far as the way things get complicated in Italy. The best thing in the film is Lino Banfi, who as Antonio, the father of the bride, keeps things moving at a quick pace. Christian Ulmen and Mina Tander are seen as the lovers that must put with an elaborate wedding no one predicted it would turn out this way.

It seems inevitable, that after the success of the small budget movie "My big fat Greek wedding" there would be other people who'd try to rip off on that success. And while that is not a bad thing, you'd wish the movies would try to set higher standards and not only cash-in on a trend.This movie is filled with clichés and as I was told never reaches the books diverseness. Not that comes as a surprise (books have the freedom of being free to explore everything, plus the reader can imagine different things, while reading it), but it's still a shame. And while this isn't completely ridiculous, it still is far away from showing is something real (the connection between the people and many other things), but still too dramatic and wrongly paced to be as funny as it could.Not that Nia Vardalos movie was better (if you watch her output after that, it only got worse though), but it was more successful ...

I have to write this review, as the film's current rating (5.9) is far too low. Already the book was good fun, including some deeper moments, especially when the main protagonist Antonio Marcipane tells about his arrival and first years as an immigrant ("Gastarbeiter") in Germany. The director of the film does a terrific job in combining humorous elements with these more difficult parts of Antonio's character, without becoming too melodramatic. The film is shot in Southern Italy with beautiful, yet realistic images. Camera and cutting is imaginative, the casting convincing (Lino Banfi is a well-known and successful Italian actor). I can only speculate that the low ratings were given by people expecting a pure, Hollywood-type slapstick comedy. Fortunately, the movie is so much more than that. Go see it! P.S: Being a German married to an Italian wife, we both felt remembered Italo-German experiences while watching the movie...