t_atzmueller
There was a time when I was working in a video-store or, as we call them in Germany, videothek. Good times and the pay wasn't bad either. It was a shared duty of all involved to sporadically check the DVDs for errors. It happened now and again that customers would wander in, complaining that the film didn't work – and of course that they didn't want to pay for a defect film. So, those films were taken home by the employees and watched with German diligence. (Just on the side: 90 percent of the times the disc and film was in perfect order and of course the customers merely tried to get off free; but that's another story). As you might imagine, this sent all imaginable kind of films through my player – don't even get me started on what we had to check which came from the "Adult-section".Now, why am I brattling on about days past, certainly boring the reader beyond patience? I'll tell you: as justification. And I assure anybody reading these lines, in any other circumstance I wouldn't have touched anything related to "Erkan & Stefan" with a ten-foot-pole. But then came the faithful day when a cross-eyed teen in baggie-pants and over-sized baseball cap appeared before the counter, mumbling something about "didn' work, voll krass, eyh". So, here I was with "Erkan & Stefan – Der Tod kommt krass" at my hands, cursing god and humanity, even trying to haggle with a female co-worker to exchange this film with the one she had to check (a porn involving fecal matters, if memory serves right). She refused.If you're not familiar with the "comedic"-duo Erkan & Stefan, consider yourself lucky. In layman's terms, we could compare them as the German answer to Ali G. aka Sacha Baron Cohen in the role of Ali G. Or, to call it's by the real name: they're ripping off Ali G. In reality two rather mediocre comedians from Bavaria, the two have slipped into the role of a Turk and a German, both bred and raised in the seedier, ghetto-part of Munich. Their trademark is combining local Bavarian slang with Denglish (a bastardization of German with English words) and Kanak Sprak (also called "Kanakendeutsch", spoken predominantly by Turkish youth in the third or fourth generation, who still haven't managed to grasp the basics of German). Their most infamous "word-creation" (of which, unfortunately, there are many) is "eyh, krass" or alternatively "voll krass". Apart from the Latin origin of "crassus", the word means nothing, apart from something being extreme, both in the positive and negative sense. Sometimes teens will also utter it without any detectable reason or random mingle it into half-formed sentences. As it is, many of their "word-creations" were eagerly picked up by kids and teenagers who came from the shallower end of the social hierarchy – or shall we say: Kanak Sprak spread like typhus.This charade was played over the next ten odd years. While the critics cringed, muttering sweet pillow-talk like "the most untalented Comedy-Stars of the nation" and the "bottom of the barrel", while language-teachers tore their hair out and parents wept bitter tears over their kids turning into morons, the alter-ego of Erkan & Stefan made those two bozos rich and popular figures. Until the day they dropped their masks on live-TV and implied in fluent German, that they would no longer associate with the scum they've catered to and would no longer play morons for morons. One would go on to become a member of the council on behalf of the German party SPD, the other one tried his luck in a couple of movies, appearing next to Corey Feldman in "Lucky Fritz" and Stephen Baldwin in "Shoot the Duke", before vanishing in the depth of soap-operas and TV-crime-shows. In short, the good news: they're gone and the bad news: their legacy lives on.That should sum it up, unless we've forgotten something. Oh, yes, the movie: It's a rip-off of "Weekend at Bernie's" and if you're able to find one single, competent gag or something that would raise as much as a smirk: keep it. From me it gets a round number of points: 0/10 (And if you're still with me, wondering what I charged the kid who was responsible for me watching this garbage, that he claimed was not working properly: roughly thirty bucks, because the DVD was long overdue).
Horst in Translation ([email protected])
I was pretty surprised when watching this movie here than I ended up liking it more than the first two "Erkan & Stefan" films. A big reason for this is Ludger Pistor who is fun to watch as always, even if his character is dead for over half of the film. This third and final entry runs longer than the previous two, actually the only one that crosses the 90-minute mark and takes place completely on a yacht, apart from the first couple minutes. Also there are two title out there for it in German. The translations would be roughly "Death comes crass" or "Fat thank you for the corpse". It was released 10 years ago, 5 years after the first movie and I wonder if there will ever be a fourth film. Probably not. But this way, with the final scene, it actually looks as if our two heroes drowned and they cannot close it on such a note right? Apart from Pistor, there are some other famous German actors in here, such as Andrea Sawatzki and Christoph Maria Herbst in a cameo. And the love interests this time are played by Arzu Bazman and Julia Dietze and man these two looked sexy in their uniforms here. Nothing short of Neldel or Zimmermann from the previous films. i never thought Neldel was that hot anyway.The script comes from the two main actors themselves and they got help by one of the producers from the last Erkan & Stefan film. It was the first writing credit for him. The film's director is pretty prolific, but not too known. He also made the Kaya Yanar comedy film from a couple years ago and he also has a very small cameo in here, his only acting credit. As I said already, I quite enjoyed this film. There were some sequences when they just went for stupid farting humor and how a male genital reacts to cold temperatures, but as a whole this was a wonderfully over-the-top movie which parodied all kinds of things and, most importantly, never took itself seriously. There is no real connection to films 1 and 2 (check out my reviews for these two as well), so it's absolutely not necessary to watch them in chronological order. That is why I recommend watching this film first and then, if you liked it, go for the other two as this is superior in my opinion. "Erkan & Stefan 3" is indeed a fat dog. Recommended.
unbrokenmetal
The 3rd movie by the comedian duo Erkan and Stefan is the least popular, going by votes and numbers of votes here, but I find it hard to see why. Surely no big art was intended, but if you liked the sense of humor in the first two films, you'll enjoy this, too. (If you didn't, then you needn't bother.) The basic idea is: put the two chaos mongers out of their familiar environment and onto a luxurious cruise ship. Andrea Sawatzki is stunning as she plays the evil woman who wants to kill show-master Hardy Flanders and blame it on Erkan and Stefan which turns a dream voyage into a terror trip. Erkan and Stefan are playing 2 roles each as they also appear as two old gentlemen, obviously quoting Waldorf and Statler from the Muppet Show. I liked the sarcastic opening scenes of the TV quiz show, where everything is manipulated and candidates are willing to be humiliated again and again, just to get a "surprise prize". Silliness not without a grain of truth. "Der Tod kommt krass" is cheap fun, but still fun, and lets 90 minutes pass quickly.
