Little Sharks (1992) User Reviews

"Fahrbier ist auch gut!"

[MattN-2 · 4 April 1999]

This is a road film about three young men coming to grips with their thespianism and living proof that comedy is not merely a genre inflicted unilaterally by Hollywood on the rest of the world. Upping the ante after "Allein unter Frauen," this is the film that put post-reunification German comedy firmly on the map. For those of you open-container-deprived North Americans, this film is worth watching just for the scenes featuring the camaro-pilot "Bierchen" and for the use of the fine technical pleonasm "Fahrbier."

Roadmovie at its best !

[Thorfolk · 10/10 · 24 December 2005]

This was one early work of young German director Sönke Wortmann. Many German actors appearing in this movie started their careers based on this movie, e.g. Jochen Vogel as the best known among them. This script is fantastic, fast furious, intelligent, lots of humor lots of human feelings and good portion of political incorrectness. Beautiful pictures from German autobahn to Munichs discos. Many famous lines in this movie actually became household expressions. At least any visitor of the German beer capital Munich during Oktoberfest Zeit, will find many parallel situations experienced by the films protagonists. "Only for Stammgäste" will be one of the answers Americans will have heard trying to enter one of the better meeting points, discos or private lounges in Munich. This is one of the rare films you wanna watch multiple times. Sadly, Sönke never came up with a hit like this. If you liked Quentins Pulp Fiction you gonna love this movie.

"Fische und Fischartige"

[georg-2 · 9/10 · 28 December 2022]

"Kleine Haie" is hands down one of the best movies to come out of Germany during the nineties. At the time it quickly earned a cult following. The story is simple, as it follows a group of three very different characters attending auditions at a Munich acting school. Aptly, the title derives from a book of speech practices, "Der Kleine Hey". KH was the sophomore feature film of director Sönke Wortmann and introduced several young actors that would become well known in Germany during the years to come, most notably Jürgen Vogel. Armin Rohde appears in a notorious supporting role as muscle car driving "Bierchen".

I am baffled by the film's success

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 3 November 2016]

"Kleine Haie" is a German movie from 1992, so this one will have its 25th anniversary next year. It was written and directed by the very successful Sönke Wortmann and is relatively short at under 90 minutes even. It was a bit of a breakthrough film for the young Jürgen Vogel who plays the main character and he is joined by Kai Wiesinger and Gedeon Burkhard who play the people his character spends the most time with. If you look at the cast list, you will also find the names of Becker, Mendl, Rohde, Hansch, Kessler, Thomczyk and others who are certainly still known to German film buffs, even a quarter century later. This film actually received a good deal of awards for its cinematography, the three main actors and most of all it won Best Film at the German Film Awards, which baffles me as I never thought this was a particularly well-crafted or creative achievement. Okay, the story has a couple solid moments and it is a film where you can never expect which direction it is heading next, but this is not enough for the glories it received and I would call them undeserving. Road movie aspects are combined with romance, comedy, friendship and the attempts to succeed in life in terms of job. It is something that was done many times before and something that has been done many times afterward and many of these times, it turned out better in terms of quality than this film here. Wortmann has many better films under his belt and so does Vogel and also the other cast members I am sure. I give "Little Sharks" a thumbs-down. Not recommended.