Schtonk!

This could have been funny - after all, the 1983 scandal of the forged Hitler diaries should be fertile ground for satire - but Dietl and producer Ulrich Limmer's script is so leadenly obvious that the film is almost wholly bereft of laughs. Focused on the swindling partnership of 'Professor' Fritz Knobel (Ochsenknecht) - a past master of forgery in the art and antiques field - and scoop-hungry hack Hermann Willié (George), the story seems intended to highlight the hypocrisy, corruption, and enduring Nazi sympathies rampant in certain sectors of modern German society. Fair enough; but hysterical scenes of nostalgia for the Führer, witless innuendoes, and repeated readings of ludicrously banal diary entries about flatulence don't exactly make for a light touch. Indeed, the whole movie is woefully heavy-handed, with grotesquely OTT performances, most of it looks ugly, and it never gets beyond that one-joke premise about hypocrisy, corruption, etc.