“The Kangaroo Conspiracy”
Anarcho-marsupial and cabaret artist vs conspiracy guru
“The Kangaroo Conspiracy”: The small artist Marc-Uwe-Kling (Dimitrij Schaad) and the kangaroo have to persuade Lisbeth Schlabotnik (Petra Kleinert), the mother of a friend, to turn away from the conspiracy guru.
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In Marc-Uwe Kling’s directorial debut “Kangaroo Conspiracy”, the anarcho-marsupial and the cabaret convert a conspiracy theorist.
With “The Kangaroo Conspiracy” the story about the narcissistic and eloquent anarcho-marsupial and the endearingly phlegmatic little artist Marc-Uwe will be continued in cinemas from August 25th. While the book adaptation “The Kangaroo Chronicles” (2019) was still directed by the successful Swiss director Dani Levy (64, “Alles auf Zucker!”), This time the Stuttgart multi-talent Marc-Uwe Kling (born 1982) personally took the director’s chair Place.
In the new satirical film, the kangaroo creator tells a red-hot adventure about trying to get a conspiracy theorist to leave the scene. The story will also be new for die-hard Kling and Kangaroo fans, as it has not previously been published as a book.
That’s what “The Kangaroo Conspiracy” is about
Marc-Uwe (Dimitrij Schaad, 36) and the kangaroo make a daring bet: they will lose their affordable old Berlin apartment if they don’t manage to find Maria’s (Rosalie Thomass, 35) mother Lisbeth Schlabotnik (Petra Kleinert, 55 ) to rescue. She took a wrong turn on the internet and is now denying the climate crisis…
On their absurd road trip to the “Conspiracy Convention” in Bielefeld, the small artist and the marsupial are targeted by conspiracy guru Adam Krieger (Benno Fürmann, 50) and his fanatical followers. And because the kangaroo and Marc-Uwe just can’t resist saying the right thing at the wrong time, it’s suddenly no longer just about their apartment – it’s about life and death.
Will they still make it? “Very likely. It’s a comedy,” the distributor gives the all-clear in advance.
Wild, shaky chases and lots of brilliant ideas
The beginning is a bit tough, the chases are sometimes confusing and the story is a bit torn as a result. But if you believe director and screenwriter Kling, that was exactly the plan. Because with “genre hopping, dream sequences, trips and the jump to the meta level”, he wants to make the reality in the film shake again and again.
Everything that has to do with the topic of conspiracy in the “Kangaroo Conspiracy” is really ingenious and subtle. Ideas such as the “Cube Earth Theory” or a dating portal for conspiracy ideologists, where you have to tick which conspiracy ideology you adhere to when registering, are both hilarious and frighteningly subtle. The same applies to the “Conspiracy Convention”, which of course takes place in Bielefeld. After all, the “Bielefeld conspiracy” that emerged in the 1990s and is actually meant to be satirical states that the city of Bielefeld does not exist at all, but that its existence is only convincingly faked.
And the fast and snappy dialogues with lots of intelligent wit are exactly what kangaroo fans want to hear and see. The little anti-capitalism side blows are also interspersed in abundance, for example the story only unfolds because of a “nice apartment with an old lease”.
Anti-conspiracy film as “a kind of vaccination”
Marc-Uwe Kling does not assume that his anti-conspiracy film can convert conspiracy theorists. “Sure thing. The ‘Kangaroo Conspiracy’ is unlikely to bring anyone back from Wonderland.” But: “According to studies, which I simply claim that they exist because someone once told me about them, ridicule can certainly prevent people who are already at the rabbit hole from jumping down it,” he hopes.
And in typical Kling fashion, he adds: “So, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, you could hope that the film is a kind of vaccination against conspiracy theories. Oh. I said vaccination. Sorry, I didn’t mean to stir up controversy.”
It’s best to just play a round of “Open Schnick” – the rules of the game are from the kangaroo in the film…