This is not a B-movie and it's not a parody of a B-movie. There are themes from B-movies, but they fell in barrels of radioactiv waste and mutated. It starts with a Jekyll/Hyde variant. Detective Nils Lovelorn (Misel Maticevic) can turn into a completely different person, Bébé (Eva Haßmann), with different clothes. Why? Because his heart was broken. How is this an explanation? Because the author said so.
This guy, Jürgen Michel, was obviously given complete creative control. As long as it was somewhat different and original, he could write whatever. And he did. Arbitrariness rules supreme, unimpeded by logic, rules, probability. The result is - hardly surprising - amateurish and tiring. The storyline is just silly, the dialogues are embarrassing. Time passes slowly, when things that are supposed to be hilarious are just tedious, nonsensical and cringe.
"Lovelorn" is not a comedy, not a thriller, not a horror, mystery, action or adventure movie. It's not among the side-effects of cocaine. It's nothing, so it must be art. Funnily enough that's what it's supposed to be. Anti-art, to be exact. Dada. Professor Svedenborg (Horst Buchholz) pontificates: "Dada was an idiotic art movement at the beginning of the last century. Dada stands for the end of all reason. For the end of all laws. For total human idiocy. And that is just the beginning. At the end there's the stupidification of all matter." In the context of Dada, that's a good thing, a mission statement of sorts. What happens when matter - in the given case a chair - gets stupider? If the answer surprises you, you are not yet Dada enough.
The funniest thing about Dada is that the anti-art works - most notoriously Marcel Duchamp's urinals - actually ended up in museums, where they were treated just like all the other works. At least this will not be the fate of "Lovelorn". The sadest thing about "Lovelorn" is the fate of Horst Buchholz. In his youth he was a real shining star. He seems confused how he could end up in something so "Plan-B"-y like this. ("Bad German Movies"-Review No. 26)
