A Disarmingly Silly Slice of Americana – The Hollywood Reporter

German actress Eva Hassmann has crafted an engaging showcase for herself with her debut feature as a writer, producer, director and star. Serving as the opening night film of the Oldenburg International Film Festival, Willie and Me is the sort of ramshackle road movie they hardly make any more. Checking your credibility at the door is the best way to experience the film, which serves as Hassmann’s love letter to both Willie Nelson and herself (America, not so much), and features cameo turns by Nelson and the late Peter Bogdanovich in his last screen appearance.  

Opening with a flashback set in 1993 depicting how, as a teenager, Greta coped with her troubled mother by listening to Willie’s music, the film flashes forward to the present, when she’s now married and desperate to attend Nelson’s farewell concert in Las Vegas (as if Willie’s ever going to stop). To that end, she sells her husband’s Porsche for a measly $7,500 to pay for the trip and leaves without telling him, accidentally burning down their kitchen in the process. Needless to say, her abrupt departure is accompanied by Willie warbling “On the Road Again.”

Arriving for some reason in Reno, Greta checks into a motel whose friendly clerk (Bogdanovich) likes to surreptitiously take a nip now and then, and is barely there for five minutes when she runs into — what else — an Elvis impersonator, Nick (Blaine Gray), who offers the beautiful foreign stranger a friendly welcome.

Things only go downhill for Greta from there, as she makes the mistake of getting drunk with a guy who picks her up and wakes up to discover that she’s missed her flight to Vegas and that he’s robbed her. Nick lends her his truck and she sets off on the road again, but doesn’t get far before she falls victim to a female con artist accompanied by three young children who hitch a ride after telling her that they’re “on their way to see their dying grandpa.” After instructing her to take a detour in search of a rest stop, they steal her truck and leave her in the desert.

As you’ve no doubt figured out by now, credibility isn’t exactly the film’s strong suit (nor would it be likely to be endorsed by the Nevada Department of Tourism), and the narrative only gets loopier from there.  But much like the songs of Willie Nelson that populate its soundtrack, the film relies on a general uplifting atmosphere as the indefatigable Greta stops at nothing to fulfill her dream. Along the way, she gets bitten by a rattlesnake, is rescued by a mysterious stranger, has a heartwarming up-close-and- personal encounter with her idol and falls for Nick.

That the mysterious stranger, whose face seems to be covered in soot, is played by Nelson himself provides an example of the film’s charming playfulness (the episode seems reminiscent of Melvin and Howard). Most of the proceedings are too silly for words, but any movie in which you get to see the then-octogenarian singer (he turned 90 earlier this year) exuberantly perform a German folk dance has to be treasured. Formerly a frequent player in films and television movies (he’s terrific in Michael Mann’s 1981 classic Thief), Nelson provides such a warm, reassuring presence here that you realize how much he’s been missed onscreen. The concert scenes in which he’s seen performing excerpts of some of his biggest hits are another bonus.

Hassmann, whose film and television credits date back nearly 30 years, proves more accomplished as an actress than filmmaker, with one sequence involving Greta’s car running over a rabbit particularly clumsily handled. But she’s a fine screen comedian, willing to downplay her striking looks with a go-for-broke silliness that proves endearing.