One-Liners: Someday We'll Laugh About This

GOODBYE LENIN! (2003) (B) - A fond look back at the fall of the Berlin Wall, this bittersweet farce imagines a young man and his sister concocting an elaborate ruse to convince their loyal Communist mother, who has just emerged from an eight-month coma, that all is still status quo in the German Democratic Republic.

A young Daniel Bruhl ("Rush") is charming as Alex, the determined son, who has a buddy record fake newscasts, persuades neighbors to keep up the facade of a thriving regime, and searches high and low for discarded jars of Mom's favorite pickles and jam so that he can transfer the Western products into the old containers. As bed-ridden Mom (Katrin Sass) gets suspicious, Alex and his sister, Ariane (Maria Simon), must get more creative in their scheming.

It's all rather clever, though it need not have been stretched out to a full two hours of running time. Alex has a love interest, Lara (the adorable Chulpan Khamatova), the Russian nurse who cared for Mom. Ariane, a single mom of an infant, finds an understanding boyfriend from West Germany, Rainer (Alexander Beyer). Mom and the kids were abandoned by their father when the kids were young; he went off to the West, but then never apparently sent for them.

Wolfgang Becker's film is alternatively madcap and wistful. The cast is especially appealing. More economical storytelling would have provided just a little more zip.

TWO NIGHT STAND (C-minus) - The kids make a movie! Max Nichols, son of legendary Mike Nichols, directs a silly millennial romantic comedy. Here, a pair hook up for a one-night stand, but they get snowed in, so they try to make it through a second night.

Our boy Miles Teller has really outgrown the aw-shucks slickster role, the cute safe boy, and here he's dragged down by the marginally talented Analeigh Tipton, a former contestant on "America's Next Top Model" who suffers from the curse of "Damsels in Distress," a movie so bad that we made it into a thing. Teller's shtick fails to click, and Tipton is a disaster at line readings and at trying to play sexy (while maintaining a PG posture in the bedroom scenes).

The writers strive for edginess and honesty, but it all comes off as forced and cloying. A twist in the second half abandons any pretext at authenticity and mires Tipton's character in a stereotypical pining, jilted lover.

The soundtrack has a cheesy '80s rom-com feel to it. The ending is as goofy as it is trite. It's just not for mature audiences.