Maybe... Maybe Not (1994)

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

There is only one reason to watch this film: sexy Til Schweiger. He has beauty and magnetism, besides being an extraordinary young actor with subtlety, understated power, and depth. Unfortunately, these qualities are all but lost in this heavy-handed comedy. It is beautifully shot but, considering its comedic intent, rather darkly so. The story and its underlying principles leave much to be desired. Handsome Axel (Schweiger) works in a 30's-style supper club, presumably to remind us of the wacky social farces of that period. Any illusions on that score end, however, when he gallantly accompanies an inviting woman into the bathroom for a quickie. His girlfriend Doro, in the next stall, informs him that they're through. Axel is a very pretty boy but, looking for a place to stay, he is rebuffed with varying degrees of vehemence by former girlfriends all too familiar with his womanizing. Alas, Axel's unfortunate coitus interruptus is the inauspicious high point of the movie, with the opening credits barely over. Axel is adopted by a group of 'thoughtful' gay men in his hour of need. Norbert, a middle-aged nebbish, gives him a place to stay in hopes that there is a 'maybe'. What ensues is a series of awkward and tasteless gags, mostly involving Axel's discomfort being around gays. Stereotypes abound, and no one comes off particularly well. The straight men are dorky, unattractive, and strangely mortified by the use of common euphemisms for breasts. The gay men are selfish, unattractive, and impossibly flamboyant (in case we miss the point). Doro is shrill, intolerant, and controlling. Axel is shallow, thoughtless, and virtually monosyllabic, but adorable .When Axel speaks of 'us normal men' we know where the film stands politically. The gay men appear in female attire much of the time, but speak in caricatured bass voices (in case we miss the point). Axel is deeply offended when cruised by a gay man in a gay disco; especially surprising as he asked the man for a light and directions to the bathroom, while hot, sweaty, and very sexy in a tight muscle shirt. 'Nuff said.The plot thickens – and so does the humor – when Doro finds that she is pregnant and decides to get Axel back. She finds him in her own bed with unsightly Norbert, disturbingly naked, in the middle of a very inept seduction. Despite this awkward reunion, Axel and Doro get married. Axel unceremoniously drops Norbert because his wife is 'allergic to gays' .The downward spiral continues unabated. Norbert, a strict vegetarian, hooks up with a repellent and humorless butcher, about whom the best one can say is that he has shaved every inch of his gross body. Axel cheats on Doro yet again, with a woman whose animal stimulants put him a coma. We finally hit rock bottom when Doro is bitch-slapped during one last bout of hysteria, and goes into labor. This is funny?Til Schweiger is scrumptious eye-candy, and looks stunning throughout the film in tight t-shirts, muscle shirts, open shirts, no shirt. Thank heavens for small mercies. But, in one unfortunate aesthetic choice after another, the odious older men appear in greater states of undress more often than the exquisite young man who makes this peculiar move worth watching. The ending has a nice feeling and suggests some reconciliation between Norbert and Axel. It's way too little, too late.

I thought it was fine. Not exactly deep stuff, but entertaining. Everything must be taken in context, if possible, and this was based on a popular comic strip by Ralf Koenig -- I'm guessing he's gay, based on other stuff I've seen of his, so whether his work perpetuates stereotypes or is the honest humor of a member of the gay community is not so easy to say. Not for me, anyway. I found Germany in the mid-1990s to be more tolerant of homosexuals than my hometown in Amerika, but a lot has changed in the intervening years. Anyway, political incorrectness aside, I think of this as a light comedy about relationships, like another Soenke Wortmann films I've seen [Stadtgespraech]. For students of the German language, it was a wonderful opportunity to catch some slang and modern, conversational German that we don't see in deep, intellectual films based on historical or literary sources.

I saw this film in Germany when it came out as I was living there at the time. It was one of the funniest films I ever saw. Some years later I got a subtitled copy back in England and was shocked at how unfunny it was when translated. Which goes to show that humour often only works in the language it was created in. That said, it is still a very unstylised view of culture clashes and a study of how far people are prepared to go when they aren't getting any sex. No one gets what they want by the end: the gay man doesn't get his straight friend; the straight man doesn't get his free-love lifestyle; the straight woman doesn't get her angry singledom.I guess the moral is that you can take the human out of their sexuality, but you can't take the sexuality out of the human. Trite, but it reflects the title of the film, referring to a proverbial fish out of water.

Okay, I'm just a sophomore in high school and I take German 3 Honors, and I watched this film over the summer just to view as many German movies as I could. Most of them that I watched were rather stupid, but this one stood out as one of my favorites. It kind of reminds of the humor of Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss! Rent this movie if youre bored, or just want to have some fun!