They say that the EU in its current state of capitalism is a mirror of America in the 1990s. (Remember what that was like? It wasn't all bad, really.) This certainly applies to the Berlin-set micro universe of "Oh Boy," whose very title smells like teen spirit — but it's actually set in the present day. "Oh Boy" is great fun, a trip back to the days when independent film festivals such as Sundance and Tribeca felt new. In direct contrast to the booming U.S. economy, these showcased stories about jobless, aimless people slacking off in their low-rent living rooms.
Ah, those were the days — when indie cinema absolved you from the sin of Being Ordinary. It was, like, so OK to have a less than perfect body, to use "kinda" all the time, to subsist on sugary coffee and keep using your college Apple computer forever and ever. Internet connection was sporadic at best and pagers, man, they were the thing.
Directed by Jan Ole Gerster and starring Tom Schilling from "Crazy" and "Before the Fall," this charts 24 hours in a banal but utterly fascinating day in the life of Niko, who looks like a young Fisher Stevens (another whiff from the '90s), sensitive and skinny. He's young but unambitious; he's probably smart, but he doesn't care. Niko seems not to have one coherent plan what to do with his life or his relationship with girlfriend Elli (Katharina Schüttler), or even his suspended driver's license, which he tries to recover in vain. Woody Allen would love this guy.