No More School (2000)

"Schule" or "No More School" (actually the opposite to the German title) is a German(-language) film from 2000, which means this one already had its 15th anniversary last year. The director and one of the writers is Marco Petry and this one here is still his most known work, even if considerably more than a decade has passed. This has probably mostly to do with Daniel Brühl playing one of the main characters and he is one of Germany's biggest stars right now. But if you are a German film buff, you will find more familiar names such as Jasmin Schwiers, Axel Stein, (the stunning) Lavinia Wilson, Denis Moschitto, Bettina Zimmermann and Mina Tander. They appear in a comedy that deals with a group of students in the last days of their school lives and how they feel a sense of belonging together while they soon have to take different paths in lives, individual paths as they are no longer a community.This is a pretty good premise actually and may have worked as a solid base for a quality slightly dramatic film and/or comedy, but sadly they really messed it up with the script. The plot consists of stupid attempts to cheat during the exams over glorifying drug abuse (and thinking this is comedy enough already) and relationship struggles that come out of nowhere and don't feel authentic at all. Also the pretty young cast was simply not good enough to make up for these problems, actually they make them worse on some occasions even with pretty unconvincing portrayals. And this includes Brühl as well who I consider generally pretty overrated as an actor. Admittedly, the other cast members aren't any better here. There are sometimes solid scenes like the one near the end with one guy explaining to another how he struggles because he has not left, but these are clearly in the minority and actually hard to remember with really cringeworthy stuff like the speaker scene at the end which had zero connection to reality and was neither touching nor entertaining nor authentic as Petry wanted us to believe here. I have no clue why people still love this film, it is almost 100% failure and you need to stay far far away.

First of all, if you're a foreign student planning on visiting a German school for a year, you absolutely need to see this movie.In a funny, yet absolutely credible manner you'll get an inside into the hearts and minds of German students on their last days of school. You will encounter all kinds of characters from the pedantic nerd having is first bong (/girl) to the nonchalant, funny fat guy struggling to get his high-school-degree at all. Throughout the entire movie, I was remembered on the "good old times" where there was nothing to worry about but everything to dream of. It represents the social aspects of school and friendship so accurate that there is hardly anything I could criticize here. The story is kind of simple, as it portrays a short period of time and a special feeling, where logic and accuracy aren't necessarily the most important aspects. If I want to mentally travel back in time where I sat on the grass with my buddies just drinking beer, having fun, smoking pot, talking about love and our future - I only need to watch "Schule" to get my dose.However I cannot help but recognize that there are many parallels to Richard Linklater's movie "Dazed & Confused" which is basically the same story set in the United States 1970's. If you watch both movies, you will see that "Schule" was most likely inspired by this masterpiece, which it simply cannot beat. Nevertheless, "Schule" is definitely worth watching if you understand German properly or if you're simply interested in how high school life actually looks like in a country which many believe consists of goose step marching robots. Far from it.

Honestly, this is one the best German films - if not the best one - that I saw! No comparison to the Hollywood teeny movies like "American Pie". Schule is not really a comedy. It lags of jokes that nobody needs. So there is an overall very impressing and serious atmosphere, which is supported by the proper Soundtrack.Concerning the characters and friendships in Schule I would suggest to compare it to some slayer strips like "I Know What You Did Last Summer". The only difference is: In Schule nobody is killed :)It lets you think on where you appear in the film. What You have done the same, and what different from the characters.That makes it very pleasant for me, and I guess for everyone else who got his ABI in the last few years.

The movie "Schule" (School) shows a part of the life of a small group of students, enjoying the last days before graduation.It happens that I visited the movie with some friends of mine from school and we had to agree that the movie did in fact catch the feeling we had at the time of graduation. To every character in the movie, whether it be the A-student or the "loverboy", we could remember the exact counterpart in our own class.But also the contrast between feeling free and the uncertainity what will happen after graduation and where all the friends will go was shown in the film.I think the movie is a realistic portrait of this time, on the one hand making one laugh and on the other hand saddening us.