Veit claims that he wants to travel to San Francisco because of the Golden Gate Bridge which is "The westernmost point in the world."

A comic book graphic artist named Daryll takes them both in his AMC Pacer in the direction of San Francisco.

Because the parents come back earlier than expected, Tom and Veit have to leave the house in a hurry and spend the night in the wilderness.

This man had at that time put his own application for a departure, which was granted by the Stasi on the condition that in the place of the dead victim (Veit's father) on the Berlin Wall, he should send letters and cards to the victim's relatives in order to make them believe that the escape attempt did not end in death.

The movie is based on a real-life journey of the producer Tom Zickler, who started out with friends after the fall of the Wall in order to travel to San Francisco.

The sketches of the graphic artist who brought Tom and Veit in the car are redolent of the cartoon characters Ren and Stimpy.

In total the comedy stayed in the top 20 in the charts for seven weeks and recorded about 10.3 million Euro in the box office until May 2013, with 1,597,200 viewers.

The Encyclopedia of International Films describes the comedy as "good humored, well crafted, carefully designed buddy movie, to which stands the skillful and sophisticated production in blatant disparity to the cliche-ridden and simplicity of the content.

The real purpose of his journey is his father, who fled from the DDR years ago and now lives in San Francisco.

The only sign of life since then was an annual birthday postcard to his son, Veit wants to catch him and so the trip soon becomes a race against time.

Then however timidly on explicit political terrain - how successful this is, is argumentative, but with the opinionated gesture of coming from the same home The Lives of Others (2006) the film has little in common."

Johannes von der Gathen, author of dpa, described the film as "entertaining, but arg silly comedy that lead straight and without subtleties of socialist rain in the neo-capitalist eaves."

If the producers Max Wiedemann and Quirin Berg, a few years ago with the Oscar-winning "The Lives of Others" managed a sensation, you could celebrate similar success with this half-hearted humor and casserole might be greatly doubted.

But the screenplay by Oliver Ziegenbalg lurches too listless of Gag to Gag, in between there are then some criticism of capitalism before the movie quite openly bathing in nostalgia again "MovieMaze however, wrote: "Though the crew shoots in some places significantly over target also, but everything is possible in all an entertaining road movie with a good dose of slapstick."

The film offers easy entertaining access to the historical and political background of GDR time and reunited Germany.