Product: Run, Lola, Run [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 3.0
Lola Redux: It takes 3 times for Lola to get it right!
I read someone else's suggestion that this German film would inspire Hollywood to copy it. It would if it were that original. I have seen this idea done twice already in America. The first was a short film about a man who was unable to avoid repeating the same few moments in his life, for an entire day. The documentary-like film had no stars. The next thing I knew Bill Murray was starring in Ground Hogs Day, an almost complete replication of the short film I had seen earlier. The short film isn't particularly a comedy, the Murray film is.Run Lola Run is not a comedy either. Its a film about a girl who has 20 minutes to save her boyfriend from robbing a store. Manni, Lola's boyfriend, needs 100,000 in 20 minutes to pay his bosses back for money he has left on the subway train. His life will be forfeit if he is unable to pay this money to the men he works for as a courier. Three times Lola runs in order to help her boyfriend. Each time the scenes are largely replicated but there are minor differences in timing. These differences result in major differences in what happens. I'm not going to tell you why the sequence repeats three times or how it comes out.Suffice to say that the film technique here is extreme razzle- dazzle. I don't think there has ever been a German film with this much heavy production and effects. Mostly we see Lola traversing a German city, going from one building to another, across one scenic plaza after another, running at full speed. In each rerunning of 3 very similar scenarios, her encounters with people, places and objects are just slightly off. The minor changes in time make for major differences in what happens.I have to tell you the film was an obvious formula with too few variations, to excite me much. Some might like it. I didn't think it was as much a story as it was a production. I wouldn't recommend it. Its wonderful filmmaking but very poor story-telling.