Theo gegen den Rest der Welt (1980) User Reviews

„I'm Theo from Herne, maybe you've heard about me?"

[manuel-pestalozzi · 8/10 · 11 January 2007]

This is a Quixotic tale and a road movie one really needs a heart to get into. Theo is a young truck driver from the German Ruhr industrial region, constantly out of his depth and with the social skills of a baboon - but for that of a strangely pure mind. He is totally fearless and hell bent on recovering a truck someone stole from him. So he travels south, accompanied by his Sancho Pansa, Italian partner Enno, and a young, very straight and good hearted Swiss woman they picked up on the way. His two companions are kept busy by helping him out of the scrapes he is constantly getting into.

The greatest scenes in the movie take place in a kind of a trailer park for truckers on the outskirts of Milan, Italy. There are some heavy guys around but tiny Theo struts around making demands as if he were the boss. A hooker (Alessandra May, who according to IMDb never made a movie again, in a touching performance) instantly falls in love with him and takes him to her trailer. A really tender scene ensues where the sentence in the title of this comment is heard. As the hooker does not understand one word of German, its meaning is totally lost on her. They come out of the trailer and the main heavy of the area steps over with good news. „I have a tender heart, he tells Theo with a thick Italian accent, and I have decided: a**holes have to live too." Then he asks the hooker if Theo has paid for her services. An awkward scene ensues, the girl gets slapped by the heavy and tiny Theo punches the heavy in his six pack stomach. As he already had wounded his hand in an earlier incident he cries out in pain and falls to the ground a whimpering bundle without the heavy having done anything after Theo's punch. It's as funny as it is sad.

The musical soundtrack of this movie is magnificent.

The main Story

[thorn-10 · 19 April 1999]

Perfect continuation of "Aufforderung zum Tanz". Theo and Enno have made their big dream reality, they owned a brand new Truck. Payed with leant money. Early Morning, just before sunrise, Theo, a lovely loser, stopped at a patrol station. When returning to his truck, someone is stealing it. A chase thru Europe starts. A chase, where even Theo and Enno are chased by a guy from the credit "company".

Forgettable German road movie

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 13 June 2016]

"Theo gegen den Rest der Welt" or "Theo Against the Rest of the World" is a West German 105-minute film from 1980, so this live action film is already over 35 years old and looking at the year when this was made, it should surprise nobody that this is of course in color. It is probably the most known work by director Peter F. Bringmann and maybe also by writer Matthias Seelig. And it is certainly the defining career performance by Marius Müller-Westernhagen. You see it frequently that successful musicians also attempt to have a career in acting at the peak of their singing careers, but MMW is the exception to the rule. The older he became, the more he focused solely on his career as a German rock star (no hard rock though) and I must say I like some of the songs from him. In terms of his acting, I am not too sure. He certainly wasn't bad, but also not so good that I would say he made the wrong decision to focus on singing. Admittedly, you have to say in his favor that this film here is nothing special at all in terms of the characters (good or bad, women or men) or in terms of the story. It never elaborates convincingly in terms of comedy or drama despite attempting to make an impact in both fields. I believe this film is another example of how German comedy was not great at all in the 1970s or 1980s. Another example would be the "Supernasen". Don't watch Theor. Sorry MMW.