Run Lola Run

Run Lola Run viewed March 17, 2000 on video

For full information about this film, click here

Great, they’ve set techno music to film. Not that techno music is bad: it’s energizing, innovative, and often sonically clever. It’s also about as profound as a jackhammer. For much of Run Lola Run’s 80 minute run we are effectively driven along by Tom Twykker’s MTV-bred knack for pacing and visual distraction. The momentum is so high that a lot of logical pitfalls are leapfrogged (Lola’s attempted bank heist would have taken much longer in real time), but in retrospect these problems catch up with the film’s achievements. By the end we feel that with all of its new ideas (and there are many neat ones a dazzling opening sequence, clever use of animation and the “Now and Then” flash-forwards into people’s projected futures) there is no actual depiction of a reality after three possible conclusions, everything is virtual and subjective to the brink of becoming uninteresting (and if this film had been a minute longer than 80 minutes it probably would have collapsed).

This is especially true from the human standpoint the film only takes a cursory interest in the two main characters. The plot is mostly runs around Lola, who herself runs through the movie. We don’t know a darn thing about her except that she needs to get $20,000 in 20 minutes, and that she has hair that looks like it’s on fire. Judging from the cult adoration this film has garnered, those two facts are enough to make a young audience fall in love with this video game version of a heroine. If anything, this movie spells the death of movies, because it’s just a video game. Unlike a real movie with real drama, there are no consequences here: Lola loses, but she gets to play again until she wins. The next step is to have us virtually inserted into the screen so that we get to experience as much of Lola’s crisis-of-the-moment as she does. And with video game companies spending as much on their new products as Hollywood, that day is not far off.

Run to these reviews of Lola, in order of excellence: