Werner - Beinhart!

Was für ein Sch**ss soll das sein? Without understanding german language and knowing the german culture, this movie is hard to understand... And even after 3 years in Germany, it is hard for me :D... This dry, primitive humor is not my cup of tea... When you find it hilarious, when someone burps and farts, than you'll ROFL throughout the movie though...

The beginning scene is one of the funniest scenes ever in any cartoon movie/show. But the rest of the movie just isn't really that great. There are a lot of really fun scenes that make you laugh and the dialects of the characters add to that as well, but a lot of it is just drinking beer and burping and it becomes very repetitive over time. And don't even get me started on the IRL part of the story. It just doesn't work. Maybe it sounded like a fun idea for the production team to try out, but it just ain't it. If you're making a cartoon movie, then keep it cartoon and don't try to squeeze in some weird story about the comic artist or whatever. They should have focused on writing a few more, actually good jokes. Still, ignoring that part, its an enjoyable movie to watch with the family and/or friends.

First off, you absolutely need to watch this movie in German (with some good knowledge in this language to boot), because A LOT of it will be lost in translation otherwise.

It's a specific kind of German humor, one that's definitely not everyone's cup of tea, especially since a couple of scenes involve humongous amount of poop, vomit and other grossities. But underneath it's crude exterior lies a clever exaggeration of real life situations based on the authors, Rötger "Brösel" Feldmann, experience.

Take for example when Werner is at work as a heating, air-conditioning and pluming mechanic/installer. I myself have worked in the same field, not the same job, but I've got to know a lot of people that did the same work as the characters and I recognized a lot of traits and mannerism from the movie. There were a lot of stuff going on that immediately felt familiar to me - of course in a exaggerated and comical way. One of the big ones is Meister Röhrich, Werners boss. This is the character that steals the show. The master apparently knows everything better yet is so clumsy that he always ends up causing literally disasters wherever he works at. This alone would be funny enough, but he speaks in a such strange voice and dialect, says a lot of weird job-specific terms, that it's ingenious. And would you know that he is based on a real person that refused to allow them to use his name?

Then there is the marketplace and football, the technical review of the choppers, the hospital visit and other every-once-in-a-while situations I'm sure everyone has come across and it's always fun to see with what Brösel comes up with to parody them.

As you may already know the movie has parts in it that are not animated and filmed live. These scenes are largely considered to be boring and everyone seems to skip them. To be honest, that's what I did too in the past, but over the time they kinda grew on me. Sure, they are amateurish, the humor consist mostly of burping and catchphrases and they generally pale in comparison to the animated material, but they are fun in a so-bad-its-good way and at least they seem to be self-aware about it.

When it comes down to the animation itself, there is little to complain about. It's not as fluent or sharp as e.g. Disney works and even a bit inconsistent and sketchy in the later parts of the movie, but overall just very well executed, with a good sense for physics and a big part why the slapstick in this movie works so well. There always are small things to discover that you didn't notice the first time. It's creative and full of ideas all the time.

The voice-acting was superbly done. Everyone fits perfectly and it's hard not to notice the fun the staff had while delivering their lines. Andi Feldmann easily deserves an award for his role as the eccentric Meister Röhrich.

Werner: Beinhart is pretty much the movie equivalent of a caricature painting. It's about the small things in real-life but exaggerated in a hilarious and creative manner. It is raw, unconcerned fun and it shows what a real person Rötger Feldmann is. It's just a shame that none of the sequels managed to get even close to it's level.

Really, this is the best performance of a German actress ever! (Not counting Ingrid Bergman, although her mother was born in Kiel... well...) And contrary to what everybody else says, the non-animated parts of this film are absolutely fabulous in their.lampooning of the aesthetics of the.average German film production at the time (i.e. Adult material). And the high cultural references couldn't have been much better either: Schopenhauer on marriage (halved rights, doubled duties), Rumpelstilzchen's sideway glance, poking fun at the origin of the wedding march by singing the text (two more lines would have been even better though, because "Streiter der Tugend" and "Zierde der Jugend" would have been hardly ever more fitting) and... well... when Rumpelstilzchen returns... I mean, apart from having written a name that only she (thinks she) knows, does she not come as a thief, exposing the shame of the poor guy who doesn't hold fast to his clothes? This is all completely brilliant, as is the.pastor's casting and car, even the church on its hill and the beech.grove where Rumpelstilzchen brews her stuff, I'm loving all of it, yes, and after the somewhat stupid "Alf?" guess, the "Steffi Graf" stab had me laughing out loud again. No really, completely brilliant throughout.

As for the animated parts, I guess I liked the "soccer" game and the hospital stay best, the construction site explosion worst. The best part of the visit at Frau Hansen's was the way Röhrich and Werner were treated in contrast, but it's all good.

Well, and if you don't understand the humour: It's quite simple. You have a bunch of somewhat limited people and yet with the right added ingredient of.thoughtlessness it'll turn out interesting enough. Or differently put: In the absence of an intellectual life the resulting blunders will provide the necessary food for thought, a.k.a. "What you haven't got in your head, you've got to have in your legs."

I´m half Dane and half German so i know the language so because of that I understand the movie and I think its great! the animation is crappy but the humor is good. I agree that the scenes that are not animation is boring so i usualy jump over those scenes!