"Human History": How Real It Couldn't Have Been

A classic among the causes of distress for people who are otherwise quite okay concerns the quality of today's craftsmanship.

A good plumber is hard to come by anymore, not to mention a baker who knows what dough is.

And does the profession of mason even still exist?

A new German comedy dares to come up with an amusing conclusion about this lawsuit: In "The History of Mankind (slightly abridged)" by Erik Haffner, the experts with the skilled hands either got lost a long time ago in China (where they lived with a Berliner Schnauze defend the fact that a very modest little Chinese wall was being erected, or they haphazardly tweak something in space, like “Dark Star” in their own upper room with Horst Konopke and his colleague Jürgen.

So good craftsmen are everywhere, just not here and now in Germany.

It's tempting to apply this suspicion to the film, which confirms it with wit.

After all, the profession in which you try to make people laugh is characterized to a large extent by similar virtues with which a carpenter works his material - or the blacksmith a red-hot iron?

Humor certainly relies to some degree on inspiration (or on an impulse from the unconscious).

But when a full professional of the German (television) entertainment industry like Erik Haffner tackles the history of mankind, you have to start with glowing pencils and lots of erasers until all the gags are in place so that you can present them to the German laugh-making celebrities for short appearances.

In the sketches that make up "The History of Mankind (slightly abridged)" everyone, apart from the conspicuously missing Anke Engelke and the otherwise often quite industry-solidarity solitaire Michael "Bully" Herbig, feels like everyone who has done the relevant in recent years formats have populated.

Erik Haffner also comes from this area, he was in “Ladykracher” or “Pastewka”, so the cinema film would now, to stay with the metaphor, be his journeyman or even his masterpiece.

Chris Geletneky, who is also listed as Creative Producer, helped him with the screenplay. Roland Slawik and Claudius Pläging have additional author credits.

So you can imagine a writing room with four men sitting before the question: Where is the best place to start in a history of mankind, at the beginning or at the end?

The gag potential is ignored

In this case, it was decided to go from further back to very far forward, depending on how you want to count this.

Christoph Maria Herbst plays a NASA scientist who appears to extraterrestrials as a hologram from 1977.

At that time, a probe was launched that contained a gold disc engraved with the best achievements of mankind at the time.

The fact that the UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim can also be heard on this (if it is ever played anywhere) basically has gag potential, but is ignored by Haffner and Co.

Instead, in front of three cute aliens who look like they were stolen from Disney plus, a performance show of mankind or a run through the stations of civilization in episodic form.

Then, for example, an early course of evolution (between masculinistic stupidity and gender-balanced progressive group dynamics) is decided by falling rocks.

Or the three stars of ancient philosophy present their wisdom in the style of a pop concert – in eight minutes, without an encore, and Axel Prahl is the front man as Socrates.

Or Michelangelo causes a scandal with a David in which the membrum is so clearly erected that one could mistake it for a sex toy – which, after all, the same purpose suggests itself after it is accidentally severed.

The fact that the Titanic was steered by a taster intern that fateful night is just as much humorous knowledge of this film as the fact that when the plan for the assassination of Adolf Hitler was being planned, there was also someone at the table who thought it was about an actual and success-oriented birthday celebration for the "Fuhrer".

In good cases, such confusions result in something amusing or at least something abysmal, as in the case of Haffner's unmistakable role model, Monty Python.

But "The History of Mankind (slightly abridged)" doesn't even come close to a legendary skit like the one about the deadly joke.

Why is that?

This could be commissioned with commissions of historians, which would take a comparative look at Max Goldt's "Monolog des morganatic bricklayers" alongside Master Konopke at Haffner, in order to determine that there are certain differences between fine humor and gag thunderstorms.

"The History of Mankind (Slightly Abridged)" has elements of a celebrity parade (look, Pastewka is hardly recognizable with the old mask) at a carnival with many obvious numbers.

If you go to the cinema for this, you risk experiencing alienation.

Later on, you can confidently play it up and down on television.