‎Toni Erdmann (2016) directed by Maren Ade • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

Toni Erdmann

2016 Directed by Maren Ade

Without warning a father comes to visit his daughter abroad. He believes that she lost her humor and therefore surprises her with a rampage of jokes.

Peter Simonischek Sandra Hüller Lucy Russell Vlad Ivanov Hadewych Minis Ingrid Bisu Trystan Pütter John Keogh Alexandru Papadopol Radu Banzaru Victoria Malektorovych Ingrid Burkhard Jürg Löw Cosmin Padureanu Michael Wittenborn Thomas Loibl Ruth Reinecke Irene Rindje Nicolas Wackerbarth

162 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 12

So when's the shitty Paul Feig remake with like Pacino and Rose Byrne?

[puts in goofy dentures]

Don't you dare steal my idea.
Review by davidehrlich ★★★★½ 9

it's true.

all of it.

(i have some major misgivings about the last 15 minutes, which feel — at least on first viewing — that they blunt out what could have been one of the great movie endings in recent memory, but everything you heard from Cannes about Maren Ade's shaggy epic is right on the money. the shortest 160 minutes you'll spend at the movies this year).
Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★½ 12

Almost everyone in my theater was laughing for about three hours straight. I think that speaks for itself; I've never quite had a movie-going experience like seeing this film with an audience.
Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★½

“He was on old dog”.
That the humanist ideal of reconstruction Europe and the current European community can’t be reconciled is old news, but it takes an Andy Kaufmanesque prankster in a very old fashioned sentimental mission to, if not exactly exhume the corpse at least bring it into sharp relief. You'll laugh, you'll cry and things will just pass away. And it is really very very funny. Experimental human behavior played with broad Cassavetian exuberance at its best. Also, in the age of bloated festival film, it is always joy to get a 160 minutes one that needs every second of it to count.
Review by Jonathan White ★★★★ 21

TIFF16 Film #1

Reason for Pick – Eli’s Hayes’ review out of Cannes

Toni Erdmann is a complex dance that paints the outline of the relationship between a lonely father and his career occupied daughter, who's living abroad.

I went in with the impression that this was going to be two hours and forty minutes of non-stop laughter. It isn’t. While there are frequent laugh-out-loud moments, and two scenes that sends the audience into fits, the remainder ranges from poignant to painful to awkward. Writer / Director Maren Ade isn’t afraid to linger on a shot, often cutting a few seconds after the natural beat, which gives a feeling of reality over scripted drama. She also isn’t afraid to use…
Review by Michael Sicinski ★★★★

[8]

Well, Christian Petzold broke the ice, but it looks like Maren Ade's going to bring it home: the "Berlin School" has broken beyond the rarefied festival circuit to produce bona fide hits. What's particularly shocking about this turn of events is that, unlike other segments of the austere art-film universe, the Berlin School appears to have crossed over into the mainstream almost by accident. Apart from slightly more direct plotting, there's nothing about Petzold's Phoenix that made it inherently more accessible than his earlier films. And now, Ade gives us Toni Erdmann, a generational comedy that, at its core, is about the inappropriate character and unavoidable embarrassment that accompanies "humor" between the generations.

Ade has long been the stealth…

Recent reviews

Review by divakern ★★★★½

Oh. My. So. Good.
Review by Matt Rabinowitz ★★★★★ 1

One of my all time favorites, words don’t do justice to how beautiful and human this movie is. Maren Ade HOLY FUCKING SHIT, she gets it. So excited for anything and everything she does forever. Such a beautiful script, such perfect direction. Hüller is unbelievable and Simonishek finds the perfect balance between lovable and annoying as shit. The “Greatest Love of All” and Naked Party sequences are some of the most well blocked shot and edited set pieces in the history of cinema.

I LOVE THIS MOVIE SO FUCKING MUCH! THANK YOU MAREN ADE!
Review by ghdighdi1234 ★★★½

키득키득하다 자리잡는 아득한 자리들.
Review by oiloncanvas ★★★½

진심인지 은유인지
Review by Extremely Glenn, Incredibly Close ★★★★½

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

How many times have we ever witnessed practical joke in films? From today's modern cinema, we've seen those japes in Neighbors and its follow-up Sorority Rising, or we can go back to the 70s, where its horrifying and cruel prank of blood's pig on Carrie White in Carrie still haunts you to sleep. But no other than Toni Edrmann could actually pull it the same way it does. Toni Erdmann's thorough tone is built of chuckling and giggling, but the film itself retains to live up to its potential by playing it right: they go deeper than that. These characters thrive as the humor kicks in, making the laughs essential. Instead of being cherries on top, they are used to…
Review by aklaqhaq ★★★★★

My dad doesn’t even pick up my calls and he’s committing identity fraud for his kid
Review by jacobtays

[8]
Review by weehunk ★★★★

My father believed it was his inherent right to embarass his kids. We'd be walking down the street and he'd break out in song. As kids we all had different coping strategies. My sister was the youngest and almost too easy to embarrass. She remains embarassed to this day. My younger brother just pretended it wasn't happening. Being the oldest I decided to join him in singing. It's hard to embarrass me to this day.
Review by Steve Quick ★★★★

This is the first film I've felt like talking about in two years. It's really long and the first half is somber and the main characters aren't especially likeable, so I was wondering how it got such good reviews.

Half-way through, it becomes comedic in a way that caused me to think "That's just stupid." The jokes, though, were well-crafted, were based on things that had happened earlier and told you something about the characters. It started to grow on me, but not enough to recommend.

Then, with half an hour to go, there's an amateur rendition of "The Greatest Love of All" where you suddenly see dimensions of a character you hadn't guessed were there and you realize the…