Vincent Wants to Sea: A German Road Movie for the Haldol Generation

Here’s one solution to the high cost of mental-health care: Let the patients steal their shrink’s car and go on a road trip! One’s OCD, another’s got Tourette syndrome, and the third is anorexic—what could possibly go wrong?!? This sentimental German dramedy generally makes light of its three young nuthouse escapees and their underlying psychiatric problems. Here, what they need to heal is fresh air and freedom, driving montages set to schmaltzy Euro-ballads, and to triumphantly climb a mountain while the camera swirls overhead! And yet it’s not all levity and medication-free bonding. The Tourette guy wants to dump his dead mother’s ashes down on the Adriatic coast. The anorexic girl, her heart damaged by self-starvation, has a crush on him. And the OCD guy . . . no, sorry, he’s just played for laughs, like a cleaned-up, Teutonic Zach Galifianakis. (“Don’t touch my toy soldiers!”) On their trail are the shrink and the Tourette guy’s uptight politician father; predictably, their road trip also results in parallel bonding and minor epiphanies. (Cue another schmaltzy Euro-ballad—no, wait, it’s Train?) While excessively broad and jolly, Vincent conveys one or two moments of genuine mental distress, as when the Tourette guy despairs, “There’s a clown in my head that shits between the synapses.” And Vincent‘s scenery might inspire you to drive on vacation from Bavaria to Trieste—just not with these three in the car.