Strong and Moving!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Charming and brutal

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

If there ever was a film that made me feel it was geared for being sold up for a Hollywood remake - this was it, what with pseudo-hip-hop slang and American pop-numbers in the soundtrack. It's okay enough in its own right (just like the main character is okay at being a teacher), but it does look like it's planning on scoring big-time (again, just like the main character).Whether I'm right or wrong about that, we're looking at a German flick that wants to be as edgy as is demanded from European films, but ends up bogged down by cookie-cutter cop-outs, in true American style. It's at its edgiest in the title itself, then in some scenes that involve teacher-student relations and then in the very premise that the best suited person for being a teacher nowadays is - an ex-con.The ex-con, the central character, gets out of prison and finds out that the money from the robbery he was jailed for ended up buried on the school ground. He applies for a vacated teacher's spot in a bid to extract the loot, but finds out that teaching rowdy teenagers is slightly more than he bargained for. Not a new formula for the plot, but it works very efficiently. The character of Mr. Miller is written as a rude, no-nonsense guy, and many successful jokes stem from that fact. Also, the dialog is sometimes witty, quite unexpected of them Germans.Bad, unfortunately, outweighs the good just enough to give the effort a mere middle mark. The actor in the main role, while being very handsome and having a striking on-screen appeal, gives an unbalanced performance. Many times he acts out instead of just acting and other times he merely recites the lines. The rest of the cast is also as mediocre, but in their case that isn't such a problem since their characters are written as predictable clichés anyway and don't have to carry the film.The story itself doesn't squeeze enough out of the premise and goes for clichéd resolutions way too often. Subplots are underwritten (such as ex-con's relation to his former mates), forced (the love story) or thrown in out of the blue (the theatre play), while one crucial possibility, that the police might also be snooping around trying to recover the loot, is completely forgotten.Clocking at 110 minutes, this is by no means a light feature. Some scenes drag on unnecessarily, especially attempts at slapstick that never really come out right. Instead of trimming down the fat, the director tried to cover up the lack of pace by - choppy editing. This is the single most outstanding technical problem in "Fack ju, Göhte" - the cuts are often so fast and abrupt they get in the way of the flow and the plot. Because of that, many scenes never have the time to really sink in, not even the draggy ones, and the comedic potential is thus lost.Also standing out as really bad is ending the story with a typical politically correct "feelgood" closure, where an interesting societal outcast is turned into a castrated and "useful" member of the community. It makes me regard this film as one big predictable hoax and it makes me hope for a Hollywood remake, seeing how it will actually be an improvement for once.

This film has some of the most conflicting reviews I've ever read! Comedies will always polarise opinions but this one seems to have gone to the extreme, although in fairness, there are only around 11 reviews at the time of writing mine so perhaps if more people contributed their opinions, we would get a better indication of the overall success of the film.First, I'll discuss the story and how engaging it is: I really liked the leads and the supporting characters were interesting. It's a fairly predictable plot so I knew what to expect but I always like it when character development and changes in people are done subtly and believably. No one suddenly makes any huge leaps to become a better person and in fact, people don't do a complete 180 and suddenly change every aspect of their personalities which adds to the realism.This is a very fast-paced, slapstick-style film which injects enough sarcasm and biting one-liners that the 'silly humour' aspect of the direction is easily overlooked. It helps that the editing is superb; no joke is ever drawn out and the film moves frantically from one scene to the next. I would say that the style of the film is similar to that of Clueless (1995) in that people use over-the-top facial expressions and crazy 'goofball' things happen like setting booby traps but the script is extremely witty so it complements the action really well.I imagine that Fack ju Göhte would have been entertaining enough as a straightforward film without any humour however, it is a comedy and in terms of 'how' funny the film is, it would have been useful to me if reviewers had provided some examples of comedies they found funny so that I could compare. Here are a few comedies or films I found funny:Overt comedies:American Pie, Horrible Bosses, Step Brothers (get past the first ten or fifteen minutes and this one is genius), The Other Guys, 21 Jump Street, Hot Tub Time Machine, Someone Marry Barry, Pineapple Express, Ted, Bad Words, everything Jim Carrey...Films with humour I like:Back to the Future(s), Groundhog Day, The Truman Show, Borat, Meet the Fockers, Juno, The Guard (2011) - The Guard is a must-watch!So those are some examples of films I found funny. That's not to say I found every joke hilarious but these are films I'd recommend to someone who was looking for a funny film to watch.At this point, I will highlight that I watched the original German film with German subtitles. I'm not sure how successful comedies are when translated into other languages so it's worth noting this.In my opinion, the fact that Fack ju Göhte is one of the most successful German films in years, speaks for itself. I really enjoyed the story and it had me laughing out loud every five or ten minutes.9/10

As far as I know, FJG was the most successful German movie of the last few years - I can really not understand why this movie is so popular.The plot, or more like the idea behind the plot, was adopted nearly 100% from the 1999 American movie 'Blue streak'; and I'm saying this though I have seen BS only once, and approximately 7 years ago. It even seems like they haven't tried to modify it at all. The only adjustment was made regarding the context of the protagonist's work place (= the place where his 'treasure' was hidden) - but probably only for the purpose of connecting this idea to the stale and often (like in this case) uninspired genre of high school movies. Watching the beginning (first ~15 min) of both movies and comparing them would be quite funny.'Funny' is the right keyword: Many people recommended this movie to me because it was "so funny, witty, etc". It isn't. At all. Very shallow humour combined with some shoddy pseudo ghetto slang - That's it. Besides there are so many irritating characters (especially among the students).In addition to that, the message of the movie (if there is one; I tried my best to find it) is highly questionable in my opinion: Again this "everyone can reach everything and everyone is something special if you give them attention, bla bla"-bulls.hit. NO. Simply no. Not all students are equally intelligent, but one is of course not allowed to voice this today. (This is btw a great example of how the German education system works nowadays)It may also be that I missinterpreted the message, because it may as well be a simple plot mistake that the extremely dumb and annoying girl (hearing her slang and voice was a torment) is considered 'highly gifted' at the end of the movie. WTF? Really?Then there is the f.ucking usual love story according to the f.ucking usual scheme and thus extremely f.ucking predictable.This whole story is so far-fetched, the movie lacks any level and the acting is (apart from Karoline Herfurth and to a lesser extent Elyas M'Barek) between run-off-the-mill and annoying.To sum it up, I have really no f.ucking clue, why anyone would think this movie is at least average or even above. I think I have to re-consider my friendship to the people that recommended watching it to me. (just joking, but seriously...) I'd really have to think back to when I waited for the end of a movie this yearningly the last time.P.S.: Farid Bang appeared in this movie - That says it all. (For the other Germans who - probably unintentionally - know him)

I watched this on recommendation of my twelve year son. First I had some doubts. I didn't watch the trailer before and I thought this could be a boring movie. I was wrong and I am surprised how cool and funny the school scenes were. Especially the young main actor did an outstanding job here. I am sure that we will hear and see great successes from him in future. I agree with other negative critics here that they show some garbage moments. But it's only a film that wants just to entertain the young and adults. I think they reached this objective. See it, you will laugh very much and not forget for long time. 9/10.