Die Geschichte der Menschheit - leicht gekürzt

16 sketches reimagining historical figures and moments, with an average length of five minutes, featuring among others Neanderthals, Egyptians, Columbus, Michelangelo, the Titanic and Al Capone. The main joke is that everybody has the attitudes and uses the language of our contemporaries. There is a "Rock Concert" at Athens with the oldtimer group "Socrates, Plato & Aristotle", there are the Vikings doing affirmative action and there are some suffragettes throwing a wild bachelorette party in World War I.

In the most notable sketch we see Max Giermann very convincingly playing Jesus Christ as Klaus Kinski. That sounds very promising. In 1971 Kinski tried to start a new career as a reciter of the New Testament, but his very first appearance ended with a spectaclular scandal. Some hecklers offended him and he answered with uninhibited rage and bile. He was more into the whipping than into the loving part of his new role. The clips from that outbursts are legendary, extremely hilarious. This sketch channels the rage, not the fun part. We just see a permanently enraged, swearing KK/JC, who - as a PR stunt - wants to fake his crucifixion and turn himself into a martyr. The sketch ends with the narrator spreading some hate against Christianity. The author obviously had some rage problems himself.

Hate is the biggest problem of this failed comedy. Again and again they insert some hate against mankind in general and Western civilization in particular. It ends with the end of mankind and an euphoric song praising that destruction. Some people should have never evolved from single-cell organisms. Actually, that's the first - animated - sketch: a disco, where single-cell organisms discuss the "problematic" aspects of evolving.

The most blatant deficiency is the humor. The sketches are annoying, embarrassing, silly or simply pointless and lame. Laughing out loud moments? None. There are some "Well, yeah, that's kind of funny, I suppose"-ideas. The original concepts of the Athens and the Al Capone sketches have some potential, but their realization falls flat. What's worse than a comedy that's not funny? (One that's also hateful, of course.)

While all the sketches feel like episodes of TV shows, some of them look very expensive - like the (especially repulsive) one praising the use of the guillotine during the French revolution. It is utterly ridiculous, how much money, effort and real talent, how much potentially valuable resources were wasted with such abject results. This is a bad movie and its lavish production makes it even more hateable. ("Bad German Movies"-Review No. 19)