Daniel – Der Zauberer
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''Daniel – Der Zauberer'' (translated: ''Daniel – The Wizard'') is a German
biographical A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curric ...
musical Musical is the adjective of music. Musical may also refer to: * Musical theatre, a performance art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance * Musical film Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the Character (arts), charac ...
drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...
written and directed by
Ulli Lommel Ulli Lommel (21 December 1944 – 2 December 2017) was a German Film actor, actor and Film director, director, noted for his many collaborations with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and his association with the New German Cinema movement. Lommel spent ...
, starring pop singer Daniel Küblböck as himself. The film was a
box-office bomb A box-office bomb is a film that is unprofitable or considered highly unsuccessful during its theatrical run. Although any film for which the combined production budget, marketing, and distribution costs exceed the revenue after release has te ...
and was panned by critics.


Plot

Rock star Daniel Küblböck is (according to the film's tagline) "loved by millions, hated by many". Teenagers Rike and Tom decide to kill Daniel with the support of the mysterious Baltazar. Daniel is, in turn, spiritually supported by his dead grandfather Johnny. The first attempt on Daniel's life fails when the teenagers are scared away by Daniel's vocal coach. Daniel is supposed to take part in a
screen test A screen test is a method of determining the suitability of an actor or actress for performing on film or in a particular role. It is typically a secondary or later stage in the audition process. The performer is generally given a scene, or sel ...
for
Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood ...
. Meanwhile, Johnny and Baltazar, representing the forces of good and evil battling over Daniel's fate, talk with each other. As a warning, Johnny briefly changes Baltazar into a
cockroach Cockroaches (or roaches) are insects belonging to the Order (biology), order Blattodea (Blattaria). About 30 cockroach species out of 4,600 are associated with human habitats. Some species are well-known Pest (organism), pests. Modern cockro ...
. After Baltazar says the words "I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!", Johnny transforms him back into a human. A young girl named Petra visits Daniel. She is a fan of his and has previously written him a letter. Petra works at a café owned by her grandfather (Grandpa Winter) in Daniel's hometown of
Eggenfelden Eggenfelden (; Central Bavarian: ''Eggenfejdn'') is a municipality in the district of Rottal-Inn in Bavaria, Germany. Geography Geographical location Eggenfelden is located in the valley of the Rott (Inn, Neuhaus am Inn), Rott at the intersecti ...
. Grandpa Winter can't stand Daniel's music and neither can the café guests. Daniel sticks his finger into each cake on the counter and tastes them all, then buys them and gives Petra and her grandfather two free tickets for his last concert of the year in
Passau Passau (; ) is a city in Lower Bavaria, Germany. It is also known as the ("City of Three Rivers"), as the river Danube is joined by the Inn (river), Inn from the south and the Ilz from the north. Passau's population is about 50,000, of whom ...
. Rike and Tom plan to shoot Daniel on stage at this concert. But instead, Rike kidnaps Daniel and brings him to their house. Tom arrives shortly afterward, after Baltazar again appears to him and encourages him to kill Daniel. Tom and Rike plan to film their execution of Daniel in order to become celebrities themselves. When Daniel is briefly left alone, his grandfather appears to him and emboldens him, warning him that he is about to face his toughest trial to date. Rike and Tom return and are unable to make themselves go through with the plan to kill Daniel – instead beginning to talk about their unhappy childhoods. Tom even confesses that he thinks Daniel's latest hit song isn't bad. Rike leaves, and Tom agrees to release Daniel again on the condition that Daniel doesn't report the kidnap. Daniel returns to his interrupted concert and continues to delight the crowd, including Petra and her grandfather, who has now become a fan of Daniel's and is dancing happily. In the evening, Johnny appears to Daniel again. As Daniel asks whether he will receive a Christmas gift in return for overcoming his ordeal, Johnny says to him that he forgot to give Rike and Tom anything for Christmas, saying that he should give them something special to him - his new guitar. At first, Daniel is skeptical of the idea of giving his guitar to the people who tried to kill him but then goes to Rike and Tom's house with the guitar as a surprise. They are delighted, and Daniel, Rike, and Tom - now seemingly the best of friends - play around with the guitar in the snowy garden, to the song "I Like The Skin I'm In". Johnny and Baltazar meet again. Baltazar says to him that while Johnny has won this fight, the struggle between them isn't over yet. Johnny reveals to Baltazar that he has passed his magic wand on to Daniel, and the two debate whether Daniel will be able to handle his newly gained magical powers. Returning home, Daniel finds the wand under the Christmas tree, with a note saying: "From the one-armed man". Daniel's grandma tells him that her husband only had one arm. She met him at
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, where he was working as a musician and she as a waitress. She shows Daniel a picture of him, and Daniel says that he has appeared to him several times. Daniel's grandma tells him that he must only use the wand to help people. Daniel goes to bed and falls asleep clutching the wand, dreaming of the red carpet premiere of his film and of performing in concert. But the dream turns into a nightmare, and Daniel imagines negative tabloid headlines swirling and Baltazar stabbing him in his bed. Waking with a start, he again sees his grandfather, who tells him he has no need to be afraid. Daniel gets up, goes to church, prays, and lights a candle. The film closes with concert footage of Daniel dancing, to the song "My Life Is Magic".


Cast

* Daniel Küblböck as himself *
Ulli Lommel Ulli Lommel (21 December 1944 – 2 December 2017) was a German Film actor, actor and Film director, director, noted for his many collaborations with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and his association with the New German Cinema movement. Lommel spent ...
as Johannes "Johnny" Küblböck (Daniel's grandpa) * Peter Schamoni as Grandpa Winter * as Baltazar * Günther Küblböck as himself (Daniel's father) * Marina Lommel as Petra * Manolito Lommel as Daniel at age six * as Grandma Küblböck * Adele Eden as Rike * Oliver Möller as Tom *
Roger Fritz Roger Fritz (22 September 1936 – 26 November 2021) was a German actor, director, producer and photographer, perhaps best known for '' Cross of Iron'', and his work with Rainer Werner Fassbinder in '' Querelle'', '' Lili Marleen'' and '' Berlin ...
as film producer from Hollywood *
Günther Ziegler Günther Engelhart Ziegler (18 January 1933 – 19 December 2013) was a German cyclist. He competed in the tandem sprint at the 1956 Summer Olympics, and finished last after a crash during a repechage round. Ziegler was a German amateur champi ...
as vocal coach


Production


Style

Director Ulli Lommel stated that he wanted to make a film that shows young people how to deal with frustration and hate without getting into the eternal cycle of hate and counter hate. In his opinion, the understanding between the old and the young people and the mutual trust plays an important role in it and so he decided to shoot the film with an intergenerational cast. The cast features experienced actors like Lommel, Schamoni, Brem, and Rupé; young actors like Eden and Möller; and also lay actors like Küblböck. All scenes were filmed spontaneously.Handelsblatt.com: ''In «Daniel, der Zauberer» kämpft Küblböck gegen seine Feinde''
/ref> The film includes many references to Küblböck's real life: For example, when Daniel has a nightmare in the film, a scene from his appearance in the
reality TV show Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring ordinary people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s ...
'' Ich bin ein Star – Holt mich hier raus!'' is displayed, in which he had to lie in a coffin full of cockroaches. Headlines about Daniel Küblböck in the tabloid newspaper ''
Bild ''Bild'' (, ) or ''Bild-Zeitung'' (, ) is a German tabloid newspaper published by Axel Springer SE. The paper is published from Monday to Saturday; on Sundays, its sister paper '' Bild am Sonntag'' () is published instead, which has a differen ...
'' are also shown (one refers to Küblböck's car accident with a truck). Ulli Lommel tried to find an explanation for the controversy about Daniel Küblböck in Germany:


Soundtrack

The film contains four songs by Daniel Küblböck: * "Teenage Tears" (peaked at #16 on the German singles chart) * "My Life Is Magic" * "Man in the Moon" * "The Skin I'm In"


Release

''Daniel – Der Zauberer'' was released in Germany on 12 August 2004, and was watched by 13,834 viewers in total.Review at filmstarts.de
/ref> Most cinemas removed the film from their programme after the first week, because of the low number of attendees. On 30 September 2005 the film was released on
DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...
(available in Germany and Austria only).


Reception

The film was universally panned by critics. The website ''filmstarts.de'' states that ''Daniel - Der Zauberer'' was "unbearable for non-fans of Küblböck", "the performances of the actors were some of the worst in the history of German cinema" and that Ulli Lommel and producer Peter Schamoni "damaged their reputation." Another critic from the website ''filmzentrale.de'' described Daniel Küblböck as a hero of the recent German trash culture. He wrote that the film is staged like an
Off-Off-Broadway Off-off-Broadway theaters are smaller New York City theaters than Broadway theatre, Broadway and off-Broadway theaters, and usually have fewer than 100 seats. The off-off-Broadway movement began in 1958 as part of a response to perceived commerc ...
play. Everything in this film had the touch of the half-finished, temporary and uncertain and therefore it would be loveable. Küblböck would cultivate the lowbrow through to the
camp Camp may refer to: Areas of confinement, imprisonment, or for execution * Concentration camp, an internment camp for political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or minority ethnic groups * Extermination ...
, he'd present the beautiful sentimentality and the great
kitsch ''Kitsch'' ( ; loanword from German) is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as Naivety, naïve imitation, overly eccentric, gratuitous or of banal Taste (sociology), taste. The modern avant-garde traditionally opposed kitsch ...
. The film also performed extremely poorly at the box office, drawing only 13,834 viewers altogether, which led to it being withdrawn from screening at cinemas within the first week. As of 2022, ''Daniel the Wizard'' had a rating of 1.2 out of 10 on
IMDb IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biograp ...
. It was the lowest rated movie on IMDb for a long time, and ''wieistderfilm.de'' stated it was fair to call it the worst German film ever made. It appeared on ''
Total Film ''Total Film'' was a British film magazine published 13 times a year (published monthly with a summer issue added, between the July and August issues, every year since issue 91, 2004) by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 and of ...
s list of the 66 worst films of all time. In an interview conducted several years after its release Daniel Küblböck admitted that in retrospect "You have to say this is the worst movie of all time really." However, he took the film's failure with humor and in later years even joked about it. In a 2013 talk show, he said that it was voted the worst film of all time and ironically said "Not everyone achieves that."


See also

*
List of films considered the worst The films listed below have been cited by a variety of notable critics in varying media sources as being among the worst films ever made. Examples of such sources include Metacritic, Roger Ebert's list of most-hated films, '' The Golden Turk ...


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Daniel - Der Zauberer Films about music and musicians German avant-garde and experimental films German biographical films Films directed by Ulli Lommel German independent films 2004 films 2000s avant-garde and experimental films 2004 independent films 2000s German films