Out of envy linked to the track record of history, many fellow Europeans dislike Germans and will concede them nothing, least of all a sense of humor. So it was quite the event when, years ago, a vociferous German-baiting Continental cinephile friend -- admittedly, an admirer of Herzog, Fassbinder and Wenders -- came out praising writer-director Doris Dörrie's sharply hilarious Men/Männer (1985).

Yes, Virginia, the Teutons do have a funny-bone side, allied to ironic social commentary, the most recent of which is their official selection for Oscar 2003 and Sundance (and others) 2004, the already multiple award-winning Good Bye, Lenin! Director/co-writer Wolfgang Becker's 118-minute effort stays too long, ignoring Scott Fitzgerald's wise "be careful to convey it once and not rub it in. If the [viewer] misses it, let it go -- don't repeat." The Bernd Lichtenberg screenplay seems to lack confidence and so relies on too many repetitious little subterfuge bits derived from its already clear central complication. Still and all, despite implausibility if one thinks about it, the film works, less historical social irony than it is sweet homage to childhood, family love, first love and a concrete time and place.

His lifelong dream of cosmonaut fame born of 1978's Sojus 31 and nurtured by television cartoons, young Alex Kerner (Daniel Brühl) winds up a satellite-dish salesman whose partner Denis' (Florian Lukas) ambition is filmmaking. Alex's unobtrusive soft overvoice fills in that he lives with unmarried sister Ariane (Maria Simon), her infant daughter, and their mother Christiane (Katrin Sass). Insisting that father Robert (Burghart Klaussner) fled to his "'enemy of the state' girlfriend" in the West, faithful Socialist Mother proved too idealistic even for her fellow teachers but now continues on as a popular youth counselor and mildly sarcastic social gadfly.

First hospitalized after her husband's defection, Mother collapses again in the midst of the violent civil unrest and flight that surged in and out of the Democratic Republic in 1989 and culminated in the fall of Socialist Unity party (SED) First Secretary Erich Honecker, the dismantling of the odious Wall and an immediate influx of ideas, people, products and fads from the West. Sister's current boyfriend (Alexander Beyer, as Rainer) moves in, along with new capitalist appliances, furniture and clothing, gay neighbors show up, and Alex falls for USSR student nurse Lara (Chulpan Khamatova), while for eight hospital months comatose "Mother still slept" through it all.

She awakens to a different world, weakened, memory impaired, susceptible to another, likely fatal heart attack at the least shock. Determined to bring her home, Alex must redo their apartment, their neighbors, TV programs, kitchen shelves and foodstuffs, even their clothing, in an effort to shield her from just such a jolt. In a smaller space but more airtightly than Miami's Cuban community, he recreates a city and a frame of mind that no longer exist.

Perhaps the obviousness is only in hindsight, but along with the reunification of a country and history's most famous divided city, the family will come together again, too -- a nice underplayed scene -- and healing truth will out. The complications of the ruse are numerous, if expected, and the solutions funny, though after a while they grow cloying. Done too often, some of them need to be edited out, while a few puzzling pieces should either be cut, too, or else explained, e.g., Lara's behind-doors revelation to Mother, Alex's fake body cast, and Ariane's reaction on seeing Father in a corridor (having previously, humorously, recognized his voice at her Burger King drive-in job).

By the time Mother escapes her time-capsule room to find a surreally suspended Lenin swirl from La Dolce Vita and point to her, the ending is past due, though her cosmo-/astronaut fireworks-journey to the stars is an imaginative touch. Alex has discovered and come to terms with the good and the bad in his and his country's pasts, but he has grown and found love and the life adventure of the uncertain future. Good bye to that past, fittest for its own time, with a good launch for the long rest of their lives. 

(Released by Sony Pictures Classics and rated "R" for brief language and sexuality.)