My Führer

Mel Brooks made comic hay of Adolf Hitler 40 years ago with The Producers (as did Charlie Chaplin back in 1940 with The Great Dictator), but he's been verboten as a source of laughs for German filmmakers until this 2007 film by Dani Levy, the first to lampoon the Führer from the country he led to disaster. Unfortunately, the level of invention here is feeble. The central conceit is that with the German war effort collapsing at the end of 1944, propaganda master Josef Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) summons the demoralized Hitler's (Helge Schneider) old drama teacher—a Jew imprisoned in a concentration camp—to reinvigorate the Nazi leader for a New Year's Day speech he's scheduled to give in a section of Berlin rebuilt with phony building fronts to hide all the damage done by air strikes. But Goebbels is actually planning to assassinate Hitler during the event and blame the Jew, thereby rekindling the nation's morale through a spirit of vengeance. Needless to say, the plot backfires. My Führer has some Hogan's Heroes–like fun while portraying the Nazis as paper-pushing buffoons, but it never really cuts loose like Chaplin's and Brooks' films, and Levy's overemphasis on dramatic elements—the teacher's family life and Hitler's revelations about how his father's abuse twisted him psychologically—ultimately undermine the intended comic tone. Optional. (F. Swietek)