NVA

to understand the movie and notice all the little details you have to know the NVA and must have served, forget all the comments of the west Germans, they will never understand because they just haven't been there...

just the scene with all the "ufo's", radios and the bottle of "pfeffi" in the office of the "spiess" is worth it or cleaning up the the leafs in the wind, i have been there...

so all together its a great movie for the east Germans

10 plus from me

winx from Florida

NVA combines eastalgia-humor, military comedy and teen movie. Although it is somehow typically German-movie-like sentimental, I think it's a great and very funny movie. You will not only laugh in NVA but also get a bit of an insight in the Eastern Germany armed forces of the late 1980ies and how the young recruits as well as the professional soldiers experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the German Democratic Republic.

You will enjoy NVA if you liked Sonnenallee (another movie directed by Leander Haußmann), but not necessarily if you enjoyed Good Bye Lenin which is much more serious and less obviously funny.

The acting is acceptable. But watch for former boy band singer Kim Frank who has only two facial expressions: natural and shocked saucer-eyed!

Don't quite know why some people complain about this film not being a comedy and at the same time being too unrealistic. If it had been realistic, there certainly wouldn't have been much comedy. I also don't think that a comedy needs to make you laugh aloud twenty times. There was much subtle humor, sweet feelings, and Kim Frank just portrayed a dreamy character. In real life, there are many people whose facial expression doesn't change much so Kim Frank keeping his was quite all right. The ending was quite unrealistic, I'd say, but happy. It's a light-hearted movie with a feel-good ending. I liked it. Loved it, actually. A serious part was Krueger going to Schwedt, and I'm glad they didn't show what happened to him there. Showing how he was when he came back hinted at it quite clearly.

Do not expect a classic military comedy, which claims to make fun of the military while only enhancing a militaristic outlook. Instead it deconstructs the elements that make the military such a murderous machine. Kind of East German version of "Buffalo Soldiers".

"NVA" works on a meta-level that it sympathizes with its heroes' attempts to escape from army drill any which way they can. It's not about loud laughs but about long lasting smiles. Utopian, of course (in one scene you will be shown the harsh reality), but very thoughtful.

Just to fill the required 10 lines: Do not go into that movie if you have been an army officer and liked your job.

I've expected a comedy about the NVA, but this is a parody. It shows the national army of Eastern Germany in a light that is not appropriate, and definitely not true.

One can make a comedy about everything, as long as the underlying facts are not changed. Even a comedy about the German KZ is possible, as Roberto Benigni with "LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL" has shown.

The movie NVA would be an "OK" comedy, because the jokes in it are overall OK. Nothing special - not hilarious, but enough to live with it.

The point is, that the movie makes a farce and a parody about the NVA. A death machine that was ready to attack WESTERN EUROPE along with it's friend the RED ARMY. An institution that used everything to get the utmost from it's soldiers. An army that marched into the CSPR in 1968, and was ready to march also in POLAND to destroy the SOLIDARNOSC. You can't make a movie without showing the tiniest bit of evil, or would you make a parody about a KZ,Guantanamo or 9/11??? Showing Osama bin Laden as a funny screwed guy? 90 minutes about a funny Osama in a Afghan Taliban camp, where he makes jokes and is training his soldiers would be comparable to what this movie is doing about the NVA!