That’s the thing with relationships. Peculiarities, preferences, longings and wishful thinking collide here. An endless series of films feeds on the conflicts that result. This also applies to the comedy “Caveman”, which deals with the question of how many behaviors still come from the Stone Age.
The film is based on a successful play and can now be seen in cinemas with a prominent cast, with Moritz Bleibtreu, Laura Tonke, Martina Hill, Wotan Wilke-Möhring and guests such as Guido Maria Kretschmer, Esther Schweins and Alexandra Neldel.
An alter ego from the Stone Age
Bleibtreu (“Blackout”) plays the frustrated car salesman Bobby, who wants to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a comedian. Ironically, on the day of his first appearance, there was a scandal with his wife Claudia (Tonke – “defective example”). Completely exhausted, Bobby stands on the stage and throws his planned program overboard. With gallows humor and self-mockery, he begins to ponder his relationship with his wife, to the amusement of the audience. He gets some of his wisdom from “Caveman”, his alter ego from the Stone Age, into whose world he disappears from time to time to hunt fish with him or to ponder men, women and life in general around the campfire.
Director and screenwriter Laura Lackmann (“Mängelexemplar”) provides a lot of laughs with her film. She talks about the pitfalls that lurk in relationships in a fast-paced and always amusing way. For example, the innocent question “How do I look?” that Claudia asks while scrutinizing herself in the mirror. She triggers panic in Bobby and he knows: “I’ve actually already lost the question”. Claudia cries at Nike (Hill – “Knallerfrauen”). Her husband enlists the support of his shy friend Hoffmann (Wilke-Möhring – “The Perfect Secret”) and Steinzeit-Bobby, with whom he discusses his problems.
Outdated role models
The play was a great success around 20 years ago. So now a modern version edited for the cinema. However: “Caveman” does not quite live up to this claim. Despite all the humor, the role models seem outdated. The women are collectors who have a sense for decoration and keep their cave nice and clean. And then they want to talk about feelings non-stop, even in the middle of the night. “Whenever I open my eyes, she’s awake and wants to talk,” Bobby states desperately. He himself is a taciturn hunter (“When stalking, you had to be quiet in order not to drive away the prey”), who is otherwise of little use apart from mowing the lawn or washing the car. Feelings – you only show them in the football stadium.
Of course, the film makes fun of exactly these idiosyncrasies, and it’s quite amusing at times. The subtitle says it all: “You get the man out of the cave, but you can’t get the cave out of the man”. But aren’t relationships much more diverse today? Do so many couples really still argue about the question of whether cleaning the house can be reconciled with being a man? And is the measure of all masculinity really still the taciturn and emotionally inhibited Stoffel, who feels most comfortable playing a video game with pizza, beer and his like-minded friend?
