Werner - Beinhart! (1990) User Reviews

Hard to find a unified vote...

[McG · 7/10 · 19 September 2001]

Since the film is divided in animated and real sequences with a tremendous difference in quality, it is very hard to cast a vote that covers both.

The animated part is hilarious (especially the football-match) and deserves definitely 8/10 if not better. A must see!

The real part is a great opportunity to get a new beer from the refrigerator or to carry the old one to the toilet. It is so boring and unfunny, a 1/10 would be overly gracious.

My recommendation is: get it on DVD or Video and skip anything that is not animation.

Die ersten 10 Minuten sind sensationell

[Sonnengott711 · 6/10 · 2 April 2021]

Einfach in Endlosschleife dass Fußball Spiel ansehen. So geil.

The adventures of a plumber apprentice

[Horst_In_Translation · 8/10 · 20 January 2015]

"Werner - Beinhart!" is the first, the best and also the longest movie (90 minutes) from the Werner franchise so far. It runs at least 10 minutes longer, maybe because it also has live action sequences unlike all the films except the most recent fifth installment. The other ones are pretty good though as well, just not as great as this one.

25 years have already passed since this got released, wow what a long time. It was a huge commercial success too and that is why there are so many sequels. Besides, a Rumpelstiltskin reference early on, this film features quite a decent cast. Johannes Silberschneider, Ludger Pistor and the very young (maybe 20-year-old) Meret Becker are among Germany's acting elite to this date. The recently-deceased Otto Sander, already famous back then, is the narrator and he reappears in later Werner films too. During the early live action sequences, Brösel basically plays himself a couple 100 years ago how he tries to make the King laugh. Sadly the king has a sickness which won't let him. Bad news for Brösel. However, the animation sequences are the real highlight from the film. The football part early on is pretty great and the plumbing sequence with Mrs. Hansen shortly afterward may be the highlight from the whole Werner franchise. This is also what made Meister Röhrich my favorite from the gang. He is incredibly funny here as is everybody else, including the guy who won't give them the key.

Apart from that, the film has some nice music including the very first song already. The humor won't be everybody's cup of tea though. It is vulgar, politically incorrect and includes breasts, vomiting, feces etc. Let me give you one example of a wordplay from this film. There is a judge who is called "H. Odensack", which means literally translated "S. Crotum". But it's much more than that. It may be difficult to see the creative approach at first, but it is certainly there (unlike in films like "Das kleine Arschloch"). Lots of talent in here. If there was one part from the film that did leave me unimpressed, it was probably the very short Neanderthal sequence. And then there is some short funny sequences like the bear Bärbel part for example. Even these are more entertaining than most of the live action sequences. The first half is not as great as the second anymore, but it is not bad either. I thought the hospital sequence was fine. Then there is also a crane sequence and if you know how everything technical in these films turns into disaster, especially with Röhrich nearby, you knew that a huge mess was about to happen.

These films are probably not too suitable for children, even if people don't die here. Finally I would also like to mention a hippo/crocodile quote. I'm not sure if this was the purpose, but I had to think of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer immediately. Anyway, great movie and I highly recommend watching it. There are not that many (famous) animated films from Germany, but this is certainly a highlight.

Hilarious animation

[jonbroster · 14 July 2004]

I saw this at the cinema in Germany, when I was a student there, then spent several years trying to find it on video. I love it.

***MINOR SPOILERS***

It is 2 stories in 1.

First the animation. Werner is a North German plumber whose only real interests are motorcycles and beer. He hates the police, authority and TUV (vehicle testing department). Here we get to see Werner: commentating on a football match in a marketplace, where the shoppers are the players (only they don't know it!), being bed-bathed by fat nurses and also Werner's boss flushing his own head down a blocked toilet!!! 9/10

Then the live action. Total and utter waste of time, fast forward through it, fetch a drink, do not even bother opening your eyes for it. 0/10 (it really is that bad and unfunny)

Even if you skip through the live action, there is still over an hour of animation.

A word of caution, the accent is very strong (from Kiel in the North, near to Denmark) I have a degree in German, and there are a few lines that have defied my best efforts for years!!

There are now 4 sequels (which are all animation)

"Can't somebody let know or is that too leg-hard, or what?"

[t_atzmueller · 6/10 · 16 February 2012]

The first „Werner"-comics had a phenomenonal success, when first published in 1981: the drawings where simple, yet very articulate, the text written colloquially, kept in so-called "Plattdeutsch" (a dialect spoken on the northern shores of Germany) and the adventures of main-character "Werner" centred around riding bikes, fixing bikes, hanging out with his rocker pals and drinking Beer. "Werner" was rough, "Werner" was rude and most importantly, "Werner" was as authentic as it gets. "Werners" creator, Brösel (translated as "bread-crumb"), being a biker himself, takes his stories from real life, adoption his own youth-experiences and his clique of friends into comic-form.

Expectations where high when the film "Werner", at the height of the Werner-boom, hit cinemas in 1990 and lining up before the cinemas often turned into a party, fans congregating with bottles of "Bölkstoff" (Beer), loudly repeating catchphrases like, "Sag mal jemand Bescheid". Alas, their enthusiasm usually went down a notch, after the animated intro faded to real-live.

So, what was Brösel thinking? We don't know, but my two theories are, that a) he tried to emulate "Who framed Roger Rabbit" and b) he thought it would be good fun, him and his pals appearing as themselves in a movie.

The live action sequences are rather forgettable – Brösel obviously has no talent to act, the jokes really aren't funny and if one can give them one merit, it's that we get to see the real-life inspirations for many of the "Werner" characters, all played and based on Brösel's friends.

The animation is somewhere between the works of Ralph Bakshi and Belgium shock-cartoonist Pischa; simple, rudimentary yet keeping in suit with the comics. Brösel has taken some of the most popular stories (Werner in hospital, as apprentice or Werner's football game) and fuses them the real live scenes.

A highlight was casting Klaus Büchner, iconic singer of cult Rock band "Torfrock", as the voice of "Werner"; many readers had envisioned his unforgettable timbre as the voice of "Werner", long before there was even talk about a film. "Torfrock", having reunited for this project, also supplied the excellent soundtrack (if you're into Biker Rock, that is), containing a number of songs that would later become hits in Germany.

A word of warning to non-German speakers (or even German speakers, who're not familiar with the northern dialect): it is virtually impossible to translate most of the slang or catchphrases, and if it were possible, well, they wouldn't be funny anymore. Or how would you translate "Beinhart"? "Leg-hard", which could be applied to bikers, choppers, bier or the general situation.

Being a "Werner" fan, giving points isn't easy, but I can only give it a meagre 6 out of 10, mainly due to the live-action segments.

Expected more tbh

[Gorgonzola234 · 6/10 · 31 August 2022]

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.

Even after so many years, still so much fun

[grintemcstinger · 9/10 · 20 April 2014]

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.

This movie kicks ass!

[wernersen · 10/10 · 30 August 2003]

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!

German cult movie...

[v-56289 · 2/10 · 21 October 2020]

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...

German cult

[imdb-57311 · 8/10 · 19 April 2016]

This is THE animated German movie. You speak German??, go and see.

This humor is pretty flat. Full of fecal humor and hilarious bullshit. The animations are funny as s***. I simply love it, as any German probably does :)

But yes.... the realistic scenes in between are pretty lame. Some are funny, but .... well... most of them suck. Sad but true. What makes it even worse. The main character in the realistic parts is the animator of the main character in the animated parts. He is one bad actor. Horrible.

Anyways.... the animations are a total payoff. :) go and see

Meret Becker deserved an Oscar for this!

[arkif1 · 10/10 · 26 January 2022]

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."