Felix Stienz returns to direct Merz gegen Merz: Entscheidungen, with Annette Frier and Christoph Maria Herbst as Anne and Erik. This time, Anne's parents Maria and Ludwig become particularly important to the family's familiar relationship chaos.
Maria wants to marry her new partner Silvia. Ludwig, who has dementia and is still married to Maria, enters a profound crisis. When he disappears and plans a final journey to the Netherlands, almost the entire family starts moving. The result is a road movie with plenty of unresolved problems travelling alongside its characters.
The heavier tone is the film's greatest strength. Ralf Husmann and Annekathrin Lang combine questions about love, loneliness, age and self-determination with the series' dry wit. The transitions often work because the characters do not present their feelings in grand speeches. They argue, evade, make poor jokes and occasionally say the right thing at exactly the wrong moment.
Michael Wittenborn gives Ludwig real emotional weight. He is more than a father whose dementia produces misunderstandings. In lucid moments, the pain of feeling one's place in a family disappear becomes palpable. Wittenborn plays that quietly, without sentimental excess.
Frier and Herbst remain a reliable center, even in more routine scenes. The film does try to handle too many relationship crises at once, leaving some conflicts sketched rather than developed. Visually it is solid television rather than a road movie full of cinematic energy. Timing, faces and a melancholy soundtrack supply the strongest effects.
Entscheidungen works because its mixture of black humor and vulnerability rarely feels cheap. Established viewers receive one of the series' more mature, emotional continuations; newcomers face a dense but still understandable web of relationships. A strong 7 out of 10.