A Teutonic version of "American Beauty" with added dysfunctionality.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Roehler mixes cheap sex humor, existential darkness, buffoonish satire and profound tenderness in almost classic proportions. Maybe this is too uneven to be a masterpiece, but it's somewhere close.
The title's pointedly incorrect pronoun is typical of the film's obtuse childishness.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
Roehler aims scattershot barbs at so many targets, from political hypocrisy to suburban entitlement, that he often misses. But whenever he takes the time to line up his toxic arrows, usually with the help of a compellingly squirmy Bleibtreu, he hits the bull's-eye.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Writer-director Oskar Roehler spends all his energy on cataloging ''outrageous'' behavior, and none on giving the transgressions any meaning.
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
The results isn't especially engaging, despite a quietly charismatic performance by Weiss, a relative newcomer who holds his own against far more experienced actors.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
It's a slick, ambitious movie that doesn't always nail all the many moods and themes it's after.
Oskar Roehler's serio-comedy Agnes And His Brothers tries to make some incisive points about the damage wrought by society's sexual hang-ups, but though Roehler throws three different characters at the subject, only one halfway sticks.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
Aside from appreciating the movie's sturdy performances, my reaction to this satire of the middle-class, all-German family swung from revulsion to mystification.
Dysfunctional families don't come much more messed up than the one in Agnes and His Brothers, a comic drama from Germany.