FEEL THE MOTION (DER FORMUL
EINS FILM) (1985)
D: Wolfgang Buld.
Sissy Kelling, Frank Meyer-Brockmann, Ingolf Lock, Dietmar Bar, Falco,
The Flirts, Die Toten Hosen, Katrina and the Waves, Meat Loaf, Pia Zadora,
Limahl, Re-Flex, Kurt Raab. (Vidmark)
While new wave music was popular
in the U.S., and it was placed on just about every Brat Pack movie in the
‘80s, its stars never directly inspired any major films of its own.
The same can’t be said for Germany, which brought out this hard-to-believe
cinematic exercise in bad hair based on the popular TV show “Der Formul
Eins Show” (The Formula One Show).
After our mechanic heroine Tina (Sissy Kelling, who starts out the film
with a nude shower scene) tries to get her demo tape to the execs at a
television studio in the process of recording a seemingly endless number
of music videos (including numbers for the Flirts, Katrina and the Waves,
and Limahl), she accidentally hands off her tape to Jimmy, a small tier
lackey while standing in for a Flirts video. Depressed, she goes
home, but runs into a sleazy producer (being followed by comic villains
played by Der Toten Hosen), who invites her over. She and her friend
quickly realize it’s a swinger’s pad and inadvertently blow everything
up.
Meanwhile, the small tier lackey is on a quest
to find Tina in an attempt to become her love interest. He accidentally
douses Tina with water and Meat Loaf (who complains that the beer is flat)
does her hair. Der Toten Hosen play (in surf gear), and Meat Loaf performs
one of his endless forgettable ballads (“A Piece of the Action”).
Tina eventually gets a job as a gopher, and her first major gig is escorting
Falco from the airport to the studio. For the record, Falco (who
kind of looks like Bruce Campbell) does perform “Rock Me Amadeus.”
Jimmy, however, gets forced into spoiling Pia Zadora’s video because of
the money he owes to the sleazy producer. Pia, by the way, does “My
Little Bit of Heaven” from Voyage of the Rock Aliens, this time
with four shabbily-dressed mechanics.
We also get a sub-plot about Tina’s beau trying
to avoid the draft (he doesn’t, and the film ends with a zany escape from
the army after a sudden shift to a serious tone), Tina’s tape getting burned
in a toaster, a urine tasting joke, and Tina’s father becoming increasingly
computer-obsessed, and at one point, being used as a wig model. The
dumb plot and silly dubbing is all pretty excruciating, but the frequent
musical numbers (despite their low billing, it’s Der Toten Hosen’s show,
and they get the most screen time and scenery shredding) keep the pace
up. Sure, it’s crap, but at least it’s bad German 80’s new wave crap,
so that’s something different. The cast also includes Kurt Raab from several
Fassbender films.
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