GETTING MY BROTHER LAID

“I am the Prince of Darkness!” announces Johannes alias Josh to anyone who will tolerate him and the fantasy life he enacts in a cape and plastic fangs. Mentally-handicapped but childlike and basically friendly, Josh is an inseparable pal to his little sister Nic but a drag to his sensible brother Michael. Josh plans to have his first sexual experience on his 30th birthday, just days away, and just as his hero Dracula determinedly chooses romantic conquests, Josh fixates firmly on Michael's bewildered girlfriend Nadine (although, to be fair, Josh really has very little concept of what sex is in the first place). Meanwhile, 14-year-old Nic, Josh's precocious, virgin mentor in the ways of love, develops a terrible crush on Manny, swaggering alpha-male leader of a pack of bullies terrorizing their town, and she determines to give herself to him. Left basically to themselves by their hardworking single mother (their dashing pilot father perished in a plane crash), Nic, Michael and Josh try to work out their bizarre sibling rivalries and entanglements whilst somehow satisfying their raging young hormones, in a hip, energetic and sometimes shocking, ribald coming-of-age comedy. Sensitive viewers may want to know that GETTING MY BROTHER LAID is more twisted and hilarious than any helping of “American Pie” yet served up, but it preserves intrinsic respect and sincerity for its dysfunctional characters, perhaps because scriptwriter Matthias Pacht himself has a brother afflicted with Down Syndrome. (In German with English subtitles)