Director: Chad Hartigan
Year Released: 2016
Rating: 0.5
Title teen (Markees Christmas), living with his professor soccer coach Dad (Craig Robinson) in Germany, experiences growing pains: he doesn't fit in well with the culture (his language teacher, played by Carla Juri, is a sympathetic soul) and has a crush on rebellious Katrin (Lina Keller) ... who smokes! and hates her Mom! and dates a DJ! There are so many problems with this it's not worth going into all of them, so I'll offer these points: for starters, in a coming-of-age movie it helps if the lead is engaging and pleasant, while Christmas' character is apathetic and unsympathetic (kind of a closed-off brat), two, there's really no plausible reason why Katrin would ever be interested in spending time with Morris in the first place (except the screenplay demands that she does), three, it hardly explores the issue of race relations in a country where racism has historically been an issue. Hartigan's decisions are consistently questionable: a scene where Morris "makes out" with a pillow covered in Katrin's shirt (accompanied by Miguel's "Pussy Is Mine") is downright creepy and then he follows that up with Robinson calling up a sex hotline (don't they have access to PornHub in Deutschland?).
