The first blow to Wolfgang Becker's Good bye, Lenin! comes from the marketing department that came up with the U.S. trailer. By clipping the film's comedic moments to paint the film as a goofy situation comedy, Sony Pictures Classics brings erroneous expectations and attempts to attract the wrong audience; thus, making the distributors appear as exploitive as the film's Coca Cola and Burger King symbols. Of course, when was the last time you saw a really funny German comedy? Like most European vehicles, political and sociological messages are abundant, yet beneath the veneer lies an essentially sentimental film that dwells on a dutiful son's love for his mother. In a sense it becomes a German political variant of Amélie with the lies and fantasies focused on making the mother happy.

Devoted to the Communist party and its socialist agenda, East Berliner Christiane Kerner (Katrin Sass) slips into a coma after suffering a heart attack brought on when she sees her teenage son Alex (Daniel Brühl) arrested during a protest. She sleeps through the fall of the Berlin wall, completely oblivious to the resulting changes that come from uniting East Germany with western capitalism. When she unexpectedly revives, the doctor warns Alex that another shock could send her into a fatal heart attack.

So Alex decides that he must protect his mother from knowing about the current political realignment, and dreams up an elaborate plan to create a private East Berlin for her within their apartment. This requires manufacturing fake newscasts to explain the Coca Cola banner outside their window, the Felliniesque helicopter removal of Lenin's statue, and the large number of vividly clothed West Germans in the neighborhood. It also forces Alex to seek out her now passé generic foods and sort through garbage bins for old jars and labels to make her believe that Holland pickles are her old favorites.

Other threads take off in various directions, the most satisfying being Alex's first love interest with nurse Laura (Chaulpan Khamatova), who not only encourages Alex to stop the charade but actually understatedly spills the beans to his mother late into the film. More disappointing is a thread involving Alex's father that serves little purpose outside of plot points involving deception and referring to the political complications of pre-1989 Berlin. Without resolution, his role becomes questionable, especially considering the languid pacing for the two hour film that could afford to lose 20-30 minutes without ill effects.

Becker seems torn between creating a metaphor for the conflict of East and West and fashioning a satisfying family comic drama. Such a film would be possible with more tightening of the script since the underlying premise is based on a simple deceit that renders much of the plot as superfluous and trite, leaving only the relationship between Alex and his mother as worthy of our time. Another possibility would have been to draw more on Laura's character to force Alex through more growth, but this relationship remains at a sweet first love stage.

While Alex's character is rounded out nicely, his mother remains little more than a stereotypical cardboard figure to hang the narrative on. Her catatonic and comatose periods become emblematic of her role. This is unfortunate because veteran East German actress Sass can do so much more. Here she dryly shifts from comedy to drama, subtly signaling recognition of the remarkable love Alex displays by the whole façade. The real find is young Brühl, who carries the vehicle charmingly from start to finish, maintaining his naïve innocence. As Germany's official selection for 2004 Academy Award consideration, Good bye, Lenin! contains the kind of starring vehicle that should lead to many more leading roles for Brühl (and from the IMDB, he already has three more feature films in the can for 2004).

With an excellent ensemble cast and interesting premise, this film should've worked much better than it does. It seems that Becker couldn't decide between his desire to make a political statement, a lightweight comedy, or heartfelt drama. So he tosses them all together for a full course dinner, when either a serving of sauerbraten, sauerkraut, or German chocolate cake would have filled the bill. A stronger film could be salvaged with diligent editing to make a more coherent and memorable screenplay. A cinematic homage to Gorbachev's perestroika program is warranted, but Becker's meandering project muddies the waters and fails to make suitable impact.