AllMovie

In an amusing spoof on the world of film aficionados and scholars, novice director Heiner Stadler has come up with a clever story of film intrigue and deception, all in the name of saving face. The chain of events begins with an ambitious film critic sitting in on a screening of a 1920s movie during the 1984 Berlin Film Festival. This sparks his interest, so when a film projectionist tells him about the long-lost director Bobo Wawerka who actually made the 1920s film but mysteriously disappeared from view after leaving for Hollywood -- the budding film critic decides he has to investigate the fate of the unrecognized Bobo. Armed with the knowledge given him by the projectionist that Bobo's last-known work was making the fist of King Kong in that famous movie, the aspiring researcher takes off on funding cajoled from the editor of a film journal. The credibility of this story is enforced by some chicanery on the part of the projectionist, and the young reporter next wings his way to Hollywood -- where he finds out the truth: there never was any Bobo Wawerka, period. But now what can he do to save his reputation? Interspersed with cameos by film professionals such as Wim Wenders, a well-known Hamburg film exhibitor, and producer Bernd Eichinger, this parody has a little added punch.