Miriam Stein and Alexander Fehling
“YOUNG GOETHE IN LOVE” My rating: B- (Opening Dec. 23 at the Tivoli)
100 minutes | No MPAA rating
Think “Shakespeare in Love” — German division — and you’ve pretty much got the number of “Young Goethe in Love,” a pleasant little romance about an artistic genius in his formative years.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is to German literature what Shakespeare is to English literature. Nearly 300 years after his birth Goethe remains the single most celebrated and influential poet/dramatist/essayist in the German language.
But as Philipp Stolzl’s film begins, young Goethe is facing early burnout. He shows up late to face a panel of educators who will rule on whether he gets his law degree; it soon becomes obvious that Goethe (Alexander Fehling) has spent most of his university years partying and scribbling fiction.
Butler's Cinema Scene 