Eight Miles High | Telescope Film
Eight Miles High

Eight Miles High (Das wilde Leben)

Critic Rating

(read reviews)

User Rating

  • Germany
  • 2007
  • · 114m

Director Achim Bornhak
Cast Natalia Avelon, Matthias Schweighöfer, David Scheller, Victor Norén, Alexander Scheer, Petra Berndt
Genre Music, Drama, Comedy

Achim Bornhak's movie focuses on the restless life of Uschi Obermaier, the icon of the 1968 movement in Germany and groupie. At the age of 16, Uschi is bored by her job in a photo lab, but soon becomes the "it girl" of Munich's club scene. When she gets to know Rainer Langhans, they move to Berlin and live in "Kommune 1", the first politically-motivated commune in Germany. While the other occupants claim she isn't political enough, Uschi just wants to have fun, works as fashion model and leads international music stars in temptation.

Stream Eight Miles High

We hate to say it, but we can't find anywhere to view this film.

What are critics saying?

63

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

The movie presents the surfaces of Obermaier's life but never lets us understand who she was.

50

Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips

The film's tone is utterly indistinct, beyond fatuous adoration of its subject.

50

The New York Times by Nathan Lee

Like most flower-power nostalgia trips, Eight Miles High has the irksome effect of reminding the audience -- whether too young or too square -- that it missed out on the grooviest moment in history, man. But as these things go, this one goes with flair.

50

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

Deliciously dumb, reasonably well-made.

40

Los Angeles Times

Any film that uses the Stooges' drone-y song "We Will Fall" to underscore a drug-love scene can't be all bad, but they, as apparently does Uschi, deserve better than this.

38

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

Has little to offer beyond titillation and pretty landscapes.

30

Chicago Reader by J.R. Jones

German supermodel Uschi Obermaier slept with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and all we get is this lousy biopic.

25

The A.V. Club

If the movie had greater style, it might approach the delirious badness of "The Valley Of The Dolls," but it's too dull to qualify as camp.

20

Variety by Ronnie Scheib

One long tease -- not in a voyeuristic sense, since its heroine, as nakedly incarnated by pouty Polish sexpot Natalia Avelon, hides none of her obvious talents under a bushel.

Village Voice

Stoned on the story's '60s-sex-bomb potential, Bornhak piles on the sex and forgets the bomb; the result is unaffecting filmmaking, as slack-jawed and superficial as its subject.