Mein Führer - La veramente vera verità su Adolf Hitler

The movie poster and description might lead you to believe that this was a joke-a-minute "Springtime for Hitler" comedy. But it's not. It's really more like the Nazi version of "The King's Speech," with a supposedly famed Jewish actor being forced to help Hitler make a key speech in Berlin late in the war.

I suppose there might have been a way to make this succeed as a drama, but the creators chose to go the comedy route, and there are far too many squirm-inducing scenes of questionable taste for it to be genuinely funny. I will admit that there are some humorous bits: Hitler playing with a battleship in the tub, Hitler singing a love song while accompanying himself on the Hammond organ, Hitler giving a speech in a "borrowed" mustache; but they don't make up for the "jokes" about gas chambers, "dirty Jews," etc. The writer also seems to think that watching guys say "Heil Hitler" is funny in itself. There are poignant moments involving the Jewish actor's family, and one especially good scene in which he talks on the phone to a friend who's in a concentration camp. But then we jump back to more tasteless humor.

The climactic scene has some funny lines, but the way it plays out throws a bucket of cold water on the entire project. Don't watch this if you are expecting a light comedy, or even a well-made dark comedy. If you want to laugh at Nazis, watch Mel Brooks.

Surprisingly, a lot of controversy has started around it in Germany. Many Jewish NGOs and notable persons like Marcel Reich-Ranicki criticize this movie, saying that making a Hitler-Satire offends the memory of all those lives murdered in WWII. They say, this movie ridicules Hitler's evil and therefore makes him human (Err, what else was he? Elephant?) PC-drivel. I couldn't care less.

The problem with this comedy is, it is not funny. Levy was obviously concerned about exactly these reactions and therefore included a morality play about Gruenbaum's attitude and difficulties. This in itself is a bad idea, but it sinks this wreck of a movie even faster by being overemphasized with no end.

To make a biting satire about Hitler, you have to go all the way like "To be or not to Be" did. If you're not the man to do it, don't try.

Awful, boring, not funny, hypocritical, totally irrelevant and definitely not recommended. I am not a friend of Helge's surreal antics, but he didn't deserve to sink in this tripe.

This movie wants to be a funny satire, but it's just a piece of embarrassing garbage.

Camera, music and set design are very good, yet each of the actors seems to have another definition of comedy and the director was unable to communicate them HIS sense of it. Topsy-Turvy in the ensemble, although some good German actors do their best (esp. Ulrich Mühe).

The absolute disaster is the screenplay. Neither comedy nor drama, it keeps searching for an identity. That's why the whole movie fails - Neither fish nor meat - just another silly joke-ridden but unfunny, pseudo-operatic flop by Dany Levy as so many before.

Chaplin (The Great Dictator) and Mel Brooks (The Producers - Frühling für Hitler) have achieved with ease, what this movie tries hard but doesn't convey at all.

Dany Levy still has to learn a very important film school lesson - screen writing (and in part directing) is just not his cup of tea.

He's much better in fund raising money for (his) movies than making them.

As most Levy movies, they are a waste of the German taxpayers money, funded by costly German TV-stations and funds of various state-departments.

I went to see this film with mixed anticipation because it was said to be a comedy about Hitler; but it had the great late actor Ulrich Muehe in it, and I was intrigued by what I had read about the plot of this film: a few days before the end of the war Hitler is a nervous wreck and incapable of making the inspiring speech which Goebbels has written for him. He needs coaching by an actor, and it must be someone who can rouse him to new heights of hatred which Hitler's favourite actors are said not to be able to do. So Goebbels gets a formerly famous Jewish drama teacher, Professor Gruenbaum, released from Sachsenhausen concentration camp with the task of coaching Hitler.

The acting was superb: Muehe's as Gruenbaum, of course, and also Helge Schneider's as Hitler, Sylvester Groth's as a smooth Goebbels, Ulrich Noethe's as Himmler (though it was surely unnecessary to have him have his arm strapped in a permanent Hitler salute), Stephan Kurt's as Albrecht Speer (not at all shown as the least guilty of the Nazis; and the members of Gruenbaum's family: Adriana Altaras' as his wife and Shawn Karlborg as his eldest teenage son. The production was also first class - excellent photography and absolute clarity of diction.

I think the film works very well except on the several occasions when the 'comedy' ('irony' would be a better word) tips over into slapstick which really should have been cut, both from the point of view of good taste and also because I think they weaken the film. The way in which Gruenbaum gradually acquires mastery over Hitler is beautifully paced and in terms of the film is even psychologically credible. Of course Gruenbaum, urged on by his wife, should use the opportunity of being so near to Hitler to kill him, and he twice comes near to do it; but in the end of course he doesn't - too proud of his success as a coach? And how does one end such a film? The climax is well staged, but doesn't, I think, quite come off.

With the reservations I have, I am glad I saw the film. There was little laughter during the showing I attended - and I think that was right and not a criticism of the film: the slapstick didn't deserve it, and the 'comedy' had of course underlying it a serious idea which forbids laughter.

It's a bit odd, a bit quirky and amusing rather than funny but it's worth a watch.