by Sean Narborough
Back at school, I loved learning about the Second World War, everything from the gory details of the war itself to the aftermath and the effect it had on the people.
This is one of reasons I was intrigued to see Fritz Urschitz’ Where I Belong, as it is focused on Rosemarie (Natalie Press), a German woman’s struggles to deal with life post war in rural England. Or that’s what I thought was going to happen.
Instead, I got an hour and an half of melodramatic monkey crap.
Back at school, I loved learning about the Second World War, everything from the gory details of the war itself to the aftermath and the effect it had on the people.
This is one of reasons I was intrigued to see Fritz Urschitz’ Where I Belong, as it is focused on Rosemarie (Natalie Press), a German woman’s struggles to deal with life post war in rural England. Or that’s what I thought was going to happen.
Instead, I got an hour and an half of melodramatic monkey crap.
The story actually surrounds Rosemarie having an affair with a friend of her father’s. This is a story ripped straight out of one of those TV movies you see advertised on a Wednesday afternoon on 5. The story is so predictable and filled with cliché after cliché and doesn’t do anything dramatic to change your expectations of this genre. Because of the predictability of the story, the script suffers in spades. It makes the characters do odd decisions, say the most ridiculous of things and is so poorly paced. You end up most of the time with your head in your hands, bored out of your mind and I wasn’t the only one in the screening who was, even one of the people running the event was bored as hell.
Just when you think it can’t get any worse, the actors start “acting”. These are some of the worst performances you’ll ever see. The lead, Natalie Press, is one of the most inconsistent characters in Where I Belong. Not only is her character poorly written, she puts in a performance that fails in every turn. She doesn’t sell her performance during any of the romantic, dramatic or emotional moments of the film. She isn’t helped either by the rest of the cast. Johannes Krisch, who plays Rosemarie’s love interest, Anton, is supposed to come off as suave and charming, but in the end he comes off as weird and untrustworthy. You begin to wonder about Rosemarie’s taste in men if she’s attracted to someone as creepy as him. It’s not just the main cast who are terrible in Where I Belong; in fact it’s actually,everyone! Remarkably, there has never been a film where so many of the cast put in appalling performances, some just can’t act and others can’t even be bothered to try.
Just when you think it can’t get any worse, the actors start “acting”. These are some of the worst performances you’ll ever see. The lead, Natalie Press, is one of the most inconsistent characters in Where I Belong. Not only is her character poorly written, she puts in a performance that fails in every turn. She doesn’t sell her performance during any of the romantic, dramatic or emotional moments of the film. She isn’t helped either by the rest of the cast. Johannes Krisch, who plays Rosemarie’s love interest, Anton, is supposed to come off as suave and charming, but in the end he comes off as weird and untrustworthy. You begin to wonder about Rosemarie’s taste in men if she’s attracted to someone as creepy as him. It’s not just the main cast who are terrible in Where I Belong; in fact it’s actually,everyone! Remarkably, there has never been a film where so many of the cast put in appalling performances, some just can’t act and others can’t even be bothered to try.
Where I Belong is director Fritz Urschitz’ first feature film, and it’s really noticeable that it is. Not only does he struggle to get good performances from the cast, the camera angles he chooses are very poor, making the film very odd to watch. The lighting is really obvious to the point you can tell exactly where the lights are positioned, which is something the audience should not notice. Even someone who hasn’t been trained to tell where the lighting is is going to notice exactly where the lights were positioned. The music created for the film helps to hammer in the TV movie feel. It’s over the top and out of place and really doesn’t reflect the period that the film is set.
Where I Belong is one of the worst films I’ve seen this year, and I’ve reviewed The Boy Next Door. It’s a clichéd mess of a story with an awful script, terrible performances and looks like a student, who’s been allowed to make a film before he learns how to make one, has made it. But what annoys me most about the film was I was expecting one film and got the complete opposite, something no filmmaker should ever do.
Where I Belong is one of the worst films I’ve seen this year, and I’ve reviewed The Boy Next Door. It’s a clichéd mess of a story with an awful script, terrible performances and looks like a student, who’s been allowed to make a film before he learns how to make one, has made it. But what annoys me most about the film was I was expecting one film and got the complete opposite, something no filmmaker should ever do.
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