Product: Run, Lola, Run [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 4.0
No, there's no cause and effect here
For me, this movie got off on the wrong foot when it posed a question and left us hanging for the answer. It basically asked us what the one question in life is, and what that answer is, then suggested that both the question and answer were obvious, and left it there without providing its answers. I could have done without that bit of annoying stupidity.The annoyance factor from that nonsense was strong enough to detract from my enjoyment of the next few minutes of colorful cartoons.To my surprise, the movie got better. After a dismal beginning it became absorbing.The main characters are Lola (young German girl with vivid red hair), her worthless, immature and moronic boyfriend Manni (who you hope will die), and her rich and philandering father. You kind of root for Lola to achieve her goal of saving her boyfriend from execution, but then again, you'd kind of like to kill her boyfriend yourself.Manni was entrusted with a wonderful opportunity in life, the opportunity to complete a drug deal and give the proceeds to the boss. This will help him climb the ladder of success in crime. What an enterprising young man. He does complete the deal, but then he stupidly leaves the fortune on a train because he sees some cops entering the train and he stupidly just gets up from his seat, without the money bag, and leaves. Dumb bunny.He then telephones Lola and whines and panics to her. She swears she will help him. His solution is to rob a supermarket and get the money that way, to avoid being executed for not producing the drug money. He gives her a narrow time frame to show up and help him, because he is on a narrow time schedule himself, due to meet up with the drug boss.That is the background of the film. Lola wants to get the money from her father, but that doesn't work. Her attempts to help the witless and extremely annoying Manni do not succeed, and we have a sad ending for our two heroes.Next thing you know, the happy couple is in bed together, and alive. None of this happened. Was it all a dream? Lola is asking questions about Manni's love for her. They are idiotic questions, but he is patient with them.Presto. The scene starts to play out again. Lola has another chance to help her idiot boyfriend out of the same jam. This time she does it a little differently and the outcome is also different, but still not very satisfying if you are actually rooting for Manni, which I was not.Once again, the happy couple are alive and well, despite the ending to episode two, and they are in bed having another philosophical discussion. This time it is Manni with the questions. Guess what. The scene is redone for us. Take three. Can Lola make things work this time?Other reviews on this site say that we are shown "cause and effect" based on different strategies and decisions that Lola makes. No we're not. We're just shown different stories. It's a little like the tv series Quantum Leap, if you remember that one. There was more cause and effect in Quantum Leap than there is here. In Run Lola Run, freak accident or dumb luck determine the outcome as much as any cause and effect.The fact that the third outcome is happier for the dubious couple than the first two outcomes seems to be telling us that Lola finally got it right, but if you use even half your brain you will realize that some very improbable things were happening all along and this is just a fantasy with no moral, no cause and effect, just an interesting story.So, what is that one question that everything boils down to, and what is its answer? The question seems to be, umm, that life gives you the opportunity to interact with your environment, and it's up to you how it all comes out. Maybe not. I don't know what the hell the question and answer are, that are supposed to be so obvious that they don't even have to be told to us.In the end, the script writer needs to get hit over the head with a frying pan for that idiocy at the beginning, and Manni needs to be whipped with a wet noodle to knock some sense into him. I'm sure that torturing him appropriately would help his maturity and character development.This is the only movie I can think of where the idealized happy ending would include the successful completion of an illegal drug deal, followed by a warm pat on the back given by the drug dealer to his brain dead protege.Lola is actually playing Manni's mommy. Manni is a crying, whining, stupid baby getting himself into a jam and then putting it all on mommy to fix, and demanding that she fix it within a specified very limited time frame, and she has to run to do so, to save her idiot baby, and he petulantly blames her if she doesn't perform the miracle, or at least show up, in the allotted time. Being stupid and amoral, Manni is a waste of skin and bone. But mommy helps him and loves him anyway. That's what mommies are for.Oh, and if there is a cause and effect to this movie, the moral would be that you need to ask a higher power for help, and you need to not rob supermarkets. Gamble instead. Get lucky instead, one way or another. The moral is - get lucky! Don't you know that if you just ask the heavens for help you will win the lottery? But if you try to rob a supermarket you will not be happy. Thank you for that wonderful bit of philosophy. Very deep. At least an inch and a quarter deep.