For many pool players of the silver screen, the game of billiards is a metaphoric path to freedom, whether financial, emotional, or spiritual. Consider Kailey, from Turn the River, who must reluctantly play one-ball to win enough money to rescue and flee with her son.   Or Sarah Collins, the down-and-out single parent from Kiss Shot, who decides that pool hustling is the only route to winning $3000 and saving her house. Or Harry, the Hard Knuckle nomad who will bet his fingers (literally) in a game of pool to reclaim his old motorbike and leave behind his dystopian existence. The list goes on and on.

To this lot, we should add Jakob ‘Jaeckie Zucker’ Zuckermann (Henry Hübchen), the eponymous star of Go for Zucker (original title: Alles auf Zucker!), a 2004 German-made, Jewish comedy about an unlucky journalist whose motto “New game, new chances,” has steered him into a world of financial debt.   His only possible salvation: the European Pool Classics tournament with a 100,000 euro prize for the winner.

As we quickly learn from flashbacks, Jaeckie is a pool hustler and gambler whose sad-sack, indebted lifestyle has him one stroke away from his wife divorcing him, the police arresting him, and the bank shutting down his night club for twelve months of missed payments. His misery is compounded when he learns via telegram that his mother has died, and that he must sit for Shiva (a week-long mourning period), which necessitates reconciling with his estranged Jewish brother and conspiring with his goyish wife to act Jewish (i.e., keep kosher, host Shabbat), lest he forfeit an undisclosed portion of the inheritance. Sitting for Shiva, however, will prove impossible if Jaeckie is to compete in the pool tournament.

Cue the comedic lunacy. Ever the hustler, Jaeckie will fake heart attacks, fall onto his dead mother’s coffin, take Ecstasy, lie to the entire family, sneak out of a synagogue on a stretcher handled by fake paramedics, and violate pretty much every aspect of Jewish law, in order to get his shot at the prize money.

Go for Zucker has generated little news among the billiards community since its release. Within the AZ Billiards Forum, the gold standard of billiards chatter, there has been just one message post, and none on the Billiards Digest or Vegas Billiards Buzz forums. The former Billiard Boys billiards movie list, which includes more than a handful of foreign and independent films, didn’t even reference it.

Yet, this is hardly a low-budget, B-rated, made-for-television film. On the contrary, the movie received generally favorable reviews from the mainstream press, four nominations for the European Film Award, and four wins plus six additional nominations for the Deustcher Filmpreis (Germany’s highest film award) in 2005. (As one journalist wrote, “It’s not every day that a comedy about German Jews, told by a non-Jewish writer, depicted by non-Jewish actors and directed toward a non-Jewish audience, succeeds in Germany.”^[1] ) The movie has even been written about in a number of books on film, including Strategies of Humor in Post-Unification German Literature, Film, and Other Media and A Companion to German Cinema.

One likely reason for the omission is that Americans aren’t really interested in foreign-made films. In fact, 95% of all films watched by Americans are US films.^[2]

Then there is the subject matter. Dani Levy, the film’s Jewish director of German-Swiss origin, said he made the film to try to revive the genre of Jewish comedy, first made famous by Ernest Lubitsch. Perhaps, the notion of using comedy to address the question of Jewish identity in the Berlin republic is not going to resonate among a community that hasn’t had a famous Jewish player since Mike Sigel was inducted into the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame in 1989.

Finally, the reason may be the billiards, or lack thereof, in Go for Zucker. Within the 95 minutes, there are only a handful of pool-playing scenes, from the opening hustle to the tournament play to the final match occurring outside of the tournament. Nonetheless, as I’ve stated before, an enjoyable billiards movie does not need to feel like InsidePoolTV.   That’s the great thing about billiards as a metaphor. What it represents off-screen can be far more compelling than watching a handful of shots made on-screen.

Go for Zucker is widely available to stream, rent, or buy on DVD.

[1]       “They’re Laughing at Jews in Germany,” by Michael Levitin, Forward, July 8, 2005

[2]       http://screenville.blogspot.com/2010/01/foreign-film-friendly-countries-world.html