User Reviews

At first I thought the author was just being fanciful with facts, but as the movie deteriorated and sank deeper and deeper into absurd, I am left puzzling - what was the point of this?

The movie has nothing to do with historical facts, it isn't really funny, it portrays Hitler as an insane petulant teenager cared for by a loving wise old Jew (however unkempt) who apparently also wrote Mein Kampf, but of course with a different message, and who is sexually pestered by a young blond maiden with long braids... should I continue?

The movie meanders from ridiculous to insulting. In the end you can't believe you just watched it.

This review contains spoilers, so don't read further if you have a problem with this. . . . . .

Well, i honestly didn't think that this movie would waist two hours of my life. I mean, i was expecting a comedy yes, but i was expecting that they follow historical facts doing this, in most part at least. This movie had so much potential, especially when looking at the cast, but what they have done, is literally made a fiction movie, about some guy that looks like Hitler, and named the movie after Adolf.. Except the part where he gets thrown out of the Academy in Vienna, the movie has nothing to do with the man it is named after.

I am someone who is very interested in history in general, and especially the two world wars, and have done a lot of reading and some research about the guy, so a know a thing or two about his life..

This movie is by it's nature a sensitive topic, and they made something as powerful and dangerous as Nazi ideology, an ideology that blinded an entire nation, and made it look like something i would rather not say in this review.

What i don't understand is how a good actor like Tom Schilling even considered taking part in this movie. If there ever was a movie that insults the intelligence of a German nation, and it's history, it is this one. And it is doing that perfectly.

The movie portraits Adolf Hitlers early years in Vienna in the beginning of 20th century. It shows the guy as a complete idiot, hater of everything, and off course, an extreme street yelling anti- semitic moron talentless aspiring artist that moves to a artists homeless shelter where he befriends some older guys that eventually turns out to be a Jew. From the start the Jewish guy is portrayed as a great helpful man that acts as Adolf's guardian throughout the movie all while Hitler is insulting him and Jews on daily basis. Then, the biggest cliché in the world happens, he sees a beautiful young German girl on the window naked, and instantly gets a crush in her.. Then off course, he finds that the girl(who is maybe 20 btw) is in a romantic relationship with his guardian(who is in his 60 btw).. So another cliché, he starts to hate the Jew even more, and joins an antisemitic gang, and eventually starts to attack Jews in Vienna.. And yeah, did i tell you that he steals the idea of Mein Kampf from the guy?

I mean the historical incorrectness of this movie is astonishing.

The movie itself is supposed to be a comedy, but in reality it looks like it is made purely to insult Germans intelligence and Adolf Hitler himself. It is not funny either.

The acting itself is good, technically also, however nothing can compensate the fact that the script is a huge piece of S**t.

I would never watch this movie again, and i really, really don't recommend anyone to watch it in the first place.

A real disappointment.

What is this movie about? The protagonist is a young man called Adolf Hitler. You'd almost think it is about the historic person with the same name. It is not! Nevertheless they mix the biography of the real Hitler with this bizarre character. But the essential facts are completely fictional. For example:

Hitler gets rejected by the art college. He is living at that time in the movie in an homeless shelter. When the real Hitler got rejected he was living together with a friend in a rented room. The homeless shelter came years later.

All the time he utters exact quotes from Adolf Hitlers book "Mein Kampf" but it was written years later than the period of time the movie extends over.

He is disgusted meat dishes that he even sometimes has to vomit just from the look at meat but the real Adolf Hitler liked meat at that time. He just became later vegetarian because he thought that meat would cause his severe stomach problems. Hitler even ate soup with marrow dumplings up to the last.

In the movie he joins a group of men who terrorize jews and hobos. That never happened. Hitler first got radicalized at WW1.

He talks all the time with a strong Austrian Viennese accent. Hitler however was born in Braunau am Inn directly on the Bavarian border and then moved with his family to several places in Bavaria where he was raised. Therefore in reality he was talking in a very thick Bavarian accent. He even often said how much he hated the Viennese accent.

In the movie he is constantly surrounded by a Jewish hobo called Schlomo Herzl who invented Hitlers typical look and even wrote the book "Mein Kampf" that is later stolen by Hitler. This guy never existed. I've got the feeling he is kind of the second protagonist just because he was played by Götz George, a mediocre actor that was for whatever reason very popular in Germany till he died.

In one scene Hitler talks about the "Völkischer Beobachter" a Nazi- newspaper that first was named like this in 1920 and just existed because Hitler came to power in the early nazi-party.

I could go on and on. I know this kind of movies. They just want to tell a moderate story and try to get attention by installing Hitler somewhere in the story. Then a lot of loose references are thrown in to save appearances. This is just a cheap trick. The poor quality of the movie speaks for itself. A total waste of time. I gave three stars just because the actors are not as bad.

Do not be mislead by this 105-minute film's title "Mein Kampf". This film is not based on Adolf Hitler's autobiography, but on a theater play by Budapest-born, BAFTA-winning writer George Tabori, who died briefly before this film was released. This is also why you should not watch this expecting a historically accurate depiction of Hitler's early years, but instead go for a political thriller. If David Wnendt can lead Hitler as a stand-up comedian into the 21st century, then "lack of authenticity" is not a valid point in evaluating this film here. This was written and directed by Swiss filmmaker Urs Odermatt. The film had its world premiere in Canada back in 2009, but it still took a while until most other people got to see it, especially Germans, namely 1.5 years later. It is basically a 2-man show. Tom Schilling and Götz George show why they are considered among the finest German actors of their respective age groups. Of course their roles are baity as hell too and it's almost impossible for them to go over the top here.

What I found most interesting was the character of Gretchen, not only because of the Faust reference, but also because she somewhat displays the German people during the years of the real Hitler's rise to power. And as I managed not to expect any great realism in here, I was also impressed by the script. There are many interesting details in the characters' interactions from start to finish, especially of course in how Hitler perceives Jewery (in terms of Herzl) and how influences, such as other, older, more experienced Germans shape his perception of Jews in general, almost exclusively to the negative. The references to Hitler's aspiring career as a painter/artist were nicely included as well and they did well in not constructing the entire film around it. There were certainly a couple scenes that could have been cut, so the film would not have crossed the 95-minute mark and still stayed essential, but it's also fine at over 100 minutes. I enjoyed the watch. Thumbs up.

Dont waste your time, it is a fictional historic movie, that has a young "Adolf Hitler" who just so happens to also be in the movie. I fell asleep twice, the story is centered around homeless artists living in a shelter trying to get by. I do see what the movie is trying to have as a theme, but it falls short and becomes utterly uninteresting.

The "dream" sequences are so long that you forget what the movie is actually about. It almost feels like two different takes off the same movie at times.

Overall the movie is a mess that you struggle to actually finish, best part was the credits, followed by the realization that you just wasted two hours.