Un prof pas comme les autres

I can honestly say I have never watched a German comedy before (Excepting Goodbye Lenin), but this was way better than expected. It's everything Bad Teacher could have been and more.

Firstly, it's genuinely funny - petty criminal becomes substitute teacher sounds weak but here the relationships and the script have a lot of zing and deliver.

Even though the arc is fairly by the numbers, the plot detailing is excellent, with fresh siutations and a strong romantic subplot. The cast are all on point and very likable, particularly the stars. All in all we liked it a lot - it's fun, consistently funny, has heart, and is definitely one of the better comedies of 2014.

If you've seen almost any German film in the past five years during a film festival that wasn't genre specific, you may have asked yourself: 'Geez, are Germans really THAT boring?' Well, be my guest if you did. And if you've seen a domestic German film in cinemas, you may have wondered: 'Geez, why are German actors so unfunny and stiff?' The answer to question No. 1 is: The German film industry runs on public funding and collaborations with public broadcasting stations, and the decisions there are made by politically affiliated men (and very few women) in their 60s. The answer to question No. 2 is: Acting schools are also usually public, teach drama courses geared for the stage, have a curriculum reduced to 18th century dramas and the occasional existentialist play which was hip in the 60s. Hence the gender stereotypes, old-fashioned themes and language, and - frequently - lack of coherence. Until 'Fack ju Göthe', that is (and apart from a few films by Faith Akın).

For this topic-wise not really interesting school comedy, following pretty much a well-trodden formula, not only became the commercially most successful German film of the decade - it's actually funny. The leads are actually hot. The acting's actually geared to the camera and not an imaginary stage. No matter how rampant the stereotypes may be, they do work with the story. No matter how silly the youth slang comes along at times, it is real urban speech. No matter how predictable the underlying social message may be - migrants, believe in yourselves, then you won't end up in jail -, it's not heavy-handed and doesn't kill the jokes.

That's because the writers, producers and the director are migrants themselves, and made this movie for an actual audience and not a public funding board. So not only is the enormous success of 'Fack ju Göthe' well deserved - it feels like a warm shower in an otherwise dreary, pseudo-intellectual German cultural atmosphere. If you want to watch a contemporary German film to see how people there tick, there isn't any alternative right now. Just don't expect anything super original or clever, just pretty solid entertainment - if the subtitles get the jokes right, or - better yet - you understand a teensy bit of German.

This movie is a lighthearted, unpretentious comedy to be enjoyed as such. I don't understand why people come on this site and write pretentious criticisms as if this movie were made with winning an Oscar in mind. I liked the movie for what it is. Also, it's recommended to have relatively good command of the German language, as some of the humor in this movie is pure speech humor which, some of it, can't be translated (for example the way Chantal speaks).

Handsome rascal Zeki Müller has just been released after serving 13 months on the inside, but now everything seems to be going his way: All he has to do is dig up his loot so that he and his stripper friend can elope on an endless holiday of snorting coke and getting breast implants (her, not him). Unfortunately, the squalid containers of Goethe Comprehensive School now stands where he once buried his stash. Yadda yadda, and the old reprobate ends up as a sub teacher in the dysfunctional school with square-but-cute (her nerd glasses barely conceal that she's a smouldering sexual vulcano) colleague Lisi Schnabelstedt, trying to come to grips with his dysfunctional pupils. In the end, bad boy gets girl, discovers his heart of gold, and becomes teacher with an edge. Never mind the plot, though, because it's just a vessel for a lot of zany teacher-student-scenes and the übercampy love story. And since many of the scenes and dialogues with the students are fast and witty, I can benignly pardon the fact that the love affair plot is far more reactionary and clearly less quirky than in the writer-director's previous smash hit "Türkisch für Anfäger" (at one point, Lisi's sassy girlfriend advises her to lose the glasses or she'll never get laid).

I ususally don't like Katja Riemann, but she really delivers an outstanding performance here (compared to the lukewarm efforts of M'Barek and Herfurth) as the cynical principal, and Uschi Glass reprises her "Lümmel von der ersten Bank" days as a worn-out teacher.

A clear 8 star comedy, but any dubbed or subtitled version will not work. The film is a social satire based mainly on exaggerated slang and German teenage stereotypes. Its success is not linked to its plot. It does not want to send any message.