Who is actually the brainwashed sleeping sheep here? The little artist Marc-Uwe, who thinks he is sharing his old apartment in Kreuzberg with a talking kangaroo? Or the gluttonous marsupial that eats schnapps chocolates and pancakes and still constantly smacks the human twerp at “Schnick Schnack Schnuck”?
Reality, truth and probability have always been mixed up in Marc-Uwe Kling’s successful kangaroo brand. This is what makes books, comic strips, radio columns, dice and video games so appealing. So it’s only logical that “The Kangaroo Chronicles”, Dani Levy’s film adaptation of Kling’s tetralogy, is now immediately followed by “The Kangaroo Conspiracy”.
Despite the corona holes in the pandemic year 2020, part one was a respectable marketing success, which is not surprising given the strong growth in the fan base since 2008 – when the kangaroo was first broadcast as a radio column on “Fritz”. Every twelve-year-old nerd who has sympathies for left-wing alternative pop culture, Berlin folklore and the reading stage author and cabaret artist Marc-Uwe Kling loves the kangaroo. Even adults are said to be among the supporters of the communist box gold.
So it’s high time that the full extent of kangaroos was finally uncovered at the “Conspiracy Convention” in Bielefeld. Walter Feldmann (Daniel Zillmann), who runs the “Walternative Facts” channel on YouTube, has the evidence. “For centuries, kangaroos have been secretly pulling the strings,” he lectures to the assembled community of conspiracy believers, running a “Zelig”-style slideshow of “historical footage”: the kangaroo next to Jesus at the Last Supper, next to the revolutionary Lenin, on cave paintings.” Down with the kangaroo conspiracy!” can only be the battle cry of all thinking people, which immediately causes a tumult at the lateral thinker meeting.
What are small artists (Dimitrij Schaad) and kangaroos doing at the convention? Well, a story that can compete with the antics outlined in the books about New Rights and gentrification in Kreuzberg – which were staged in the first film with a lot of slapstick and bang-batch humor. The screenplay of the “Kangaroo Conspiracy”, on the other hand, is not based on Kling’s stories, but was further spun by the author (with the support of Jan Cronauer) according to his own motives. Marc-Uwe Kling is also directing this time himself. Perhaps he should have left it alone.
Despite the usual fireworks of daft ideas, the solidly animated motion-capture marsupial, and the consensual humor-capable slob milieu, part two has more yawn attacks than bursts of laughter. Although the story comes up with amusing characters like the rustic Lisbeth Schlabotnik (Petra Kleinert) and the charismatic Ober-Schwurbler Adam Krieger (Benno Fürmann), the story is as thin and sticky as edible paper.
“Diesel-Liesel” Schlabotnik, the mother of Marc-Uwe’s perpetual crush Maria (Rosalie Thomass), “went the wrong turn on the Internet”, now denies the climate crisis on YouTube and wants to fly to Bielefeld “on principle”. Little artists and kangaroo set off because of a bet to bring Lisbeth back to the path of reason. If it works, Maria has to go out to eat with Marc-Uwe in Paris, if it doesn’t work, he has to give up his old apartment to the single mother Maria.
The road trip to Bielefeld is of course an orgy of bankruptcies, bad luck and breakdowns, including a short genre change to horror. After eating hash biscuits (the worst gag ever), Marc-Uwe ends up in the provinces in the gloomy edition of his favorite Berlin pub “Bei Herta”, where the night’s sleep of travelers is as endangered as it was in the ghost inn in the Spessart. And when the chaos duo also encounters fake Romans in the forest the next day, who are reenacting the Varus battle, the situation becomes completely confusing. Unnecessary flashbacks that try to add seemingly forgotten storylines complete the dramaturgical patchwork.
After all, it’s quite funny how Kling satirically overdraws the mechanisms of conspiracy myths. When Lisbeth in the restaurant puts into the world the “theory”, which is not meant to be taken seriously but is taken very seriously by her followers, that the earth is a cube, the so-called narrative takes on a life of its own in no time at all in the fluff scene. True to the motto: As long as you find someone who believes you, you can tell any nonsense. There is no more analysis potential. His film probably won’t be able to bring Schwurbler back, notes Marc-Uwe Kling in wise self-awareness of a directorial debut. But perhaps “ridicule may well discourage people who are already at the rabbit hole from jumping down it.” who believes it
