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.

Pretty bad B movie overall, but did have some funny scenes.

The acting is terrible. It's basically a collection of ridiculous scenes with flat characters. So the handsome disgusting gangster, the cute kind teacher, the rebel kids, the sex fixated female roommate/teacher, the gullible principal. It's the kind of flat characters you'd recognize from over the top 80's and 90's teen comedies so unless you think those "nerd teens go to cool party" movies were amazing comedies this may not be for you. Yeah, some of these gag scenes are funny in the first 30 minutes of the movie before it drops off a cliff and becomes terrible. Maybe one every 15 scenes is good the rest fall completely flat with bad acting, terrible cringe comedy and cheap cinematography. When someone falls in love for example we see them overact extreme interest in every single scene. There is no variety or real personality. There is no charm or slow development of anything. We just see characters act silly and never change unless they have to according to the plot. So the romance is extremely cringe, just unwatchable.

The movie itself is a cheap movie with flat camera work. The other main issue, besides it being overly cringe, is that the lead is a disgusting gangster. We see him piss, puke, eat like a pig, constant nose-picking, belching, weird nasty gags. And many other characters act the same way. The lead is trying to get a job at the school to dig up a heist buried under a school building, as we see in the very start, yet he is never clever or secretive about anything. It's all played up for gags as we see scene after scene with loose plot connections and these characters acting over the top stupid. The main plot never becomes significant.

The tunnel stuff is actually a super cool idea. It's just that we barely see it. Just like we never see much tricking in relation to getting to the buried heist. Instead we focus on the "influence rebel kids" scenes. And you know EXACTLY how this stuff goes as 90% of the plot is just stolen directly from those old B-tier Hollywood movies. So you can take the 10 funny scenes and laugh at them while the movie overall is a miss and not worth watching unless you have a huge cringe tolerance. Maybe if you are a teen and see these scenes and plot points for the first time you won't feel it's as predictable and lame. You could take the idea and make it work, but it just doesn't here.

Oh yeah, the music is god awful too. Just 2000's lame teen music playing over many scenes which again shows how cheap and predictable the movie is. Lazy moviemaking.

But only if those numbers include swearing and nudity. Not much of it, but you should be aware that Germans (or its censorship) have less issues with skin than they have with violence. The movie and its rating would not come out the same in America. And although it was really successful, I don't see any US remake in the future.

What I did see though, is a movie that touches a nerve with the youth (in Germany). For better or worse that is the way they interact with each other. Apart from that, we also have the old cliché that women fall for the bad guy. A guy who treats women like garbage. Opposites attract, but movies do go at a length to make this really clear.

Still the movie is funny and if you are not too uptight about those things you will be able to enjoy it, flaws aside obviously