"Reality XL" is a German film from 4 years ago written and directed by pretty experienced long-time filmmaker Thomas Bohn. The star here is Heiner Lauterbach obviously, but his co-actors are also not new to the profession of acting at all. I quite liked the idea here. Over 20 renowned scientists are in a room and all but one of them disappear into nowhere. What happened? A public prosecutor and his (pretty hot) assistant try to find out in an interrogation with the one remaining scientist. Unfortunately, the script here loses itself in too much absurdity and way too many plot twists. There is basically change every couple minutes about what happened, who is in charge etc. And it is just too much. The film only runs for 75 minutes without credits and yet they included so much in here. I wish Bohn would have elaborated properly in one particular area instead.
So yeah, all in all the little change in location and the fact that this is a 4-actor piece make this one maybe even better for the the stage than for a movie. It was not a failure by any means, but it could have been a lot better I think. There were moments (sunglasses, the female character's erotic references) where this film could have been better for sure. I must admit the character I found the most interesting was Giese's, even if he didn't have as much screen time as the other three. I found him intriguing to watch in terms of who he is and what he does. How does he know the protagonist stared at the female protagonist's butt when they were in another room. Quite enigmatic character, like a higher power that watches and documents all the action. Lauterbach is solid too, but as usual really only scores through charisma and not great range. The ending reminded me a lot of "Inception" with the final pen scene. But really just a very poor man's version. This film had some good moments, but the bad is more frequent. Not recommended.
Review by Thomas from the Internet Movie Database.