Der Tote am Teich

Der Tote am Teich is a TV movie, and it definitely feels like one. Although the story is well-thought, its simplistic plot-driven narrative and lack of character makes Der Tote am Teich earn no more than 5 starts.

In Der Tote am Teich - in Brazil, weirdly translated into The Ice Lake; free translation seems to be "The Dead Man at the Pond", which makes more sense. Anyway... -, retired investigator Sepp Ahorner finds a dead body at a local pond. Cause of dead, bludgeoning by an object that belonged to Sepp's uncle. Struggling to find meaning in life, Sepp takes the opportunity to do a little bit of informal investigation on his own.

Der Tote am Teich feels like one of those Christmas-themed movies. I guess this happens because Der Tote am Teich is light in tone, PG-13. However, this movie has two major flaws.

The first flaw is the lack of strong lead characters. Sepp seems to be the main character, but so does Grete and Lisa. In the end, though, we see no character development for all of them. Sepp seems to already have moved on from a tragic event, and we get no view of Grete's or Lisa's background. This lack of character development makes the ending scene out of place with the movie we've watched.

The second flaw is that there's no sense of danger. The plot centers around finding out who is the murderer, but there's no risk of the murderer ever doing the deed again, or even leaving. I guess the only risk is that they could either falsely accuse someone or never find the criminal - there are no heavy stakes.

Other than these two flaws, Der Tote am Teich delivers a simplistic story that comes and goes. You can endure the short 90 minutes of its length, and, in the end, the final revelation is, at least, clever enough, but not good enough to raise this movie to the spotlight.