--- title: 'Toni Erdmann' Review: A Radiant German Comedy About Family description: To say this film is funny doesn’t even begin to capture the out-there texture of the jokes, and of the actors’ timing canonical: https://time.com/4605633/toni-edermann-review/ author: Stephanie Zacharek article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-12-23T16:30:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T02:21:17.217Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: 'Toni Erdmann' Review: A Radiant German Comedy About Family og:description: To say this film is funny doesn’t even begin to capture the out-there texture of the jokes, and of the actors’ timing og:url: https://time.com/4605633/toni-edermann-review/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt206246c19f0a5262/6988b3778fd2ee9dac355394/toni-erdmann.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: toni-erdmann og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'Toni Erdmann' Review: A Radiant German Comedy About Family twitter:description: To say this film is funny doesn’t even begin to capture the out-there texture of the jokes, and of the actors’ timing twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt206246c19f0a5262/6988b3778fd2ee9dac355394/toni-erdmann.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Review: Radiant German Comedy _Toni Erdmann_ Puts a New Spin on Parent-Child Relationships > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account.  by [Stephanie Zacharek](https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Film Critic Dec 23, 2016 4:30 PM UTC  Sony Pictures Classics  by [Stephanie Zacharek](https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Film Critic Dec 23, 2016 4:30 PM UTC There are tons of movies about parents and their children. But there’s nothing quite like German filmmaker Maren Ade’s _Toni Erdmann,_ a seemingly simple story about a practical-joker dad, Winifred (played by Austrian actor Peter Simonischek), who launches an unusual plan to loosen up his high-strung consultant daughter, Inès (Sandra Hüller). Winifred is a long- divorced and extremely rumpled music teacher living somewhere in provincial Germany, with an ancient and very tired dog as his only companion. His shaggy crop of grayish hair looks as if it hasn’t seen a comb since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Inès, working on a tense assignment in Bucharest, comes home for a birthday visit but barely has time for her father. She’s a woman who, sometimes even in her leisure hours, dresses in trim, dark, boyish suits and extremely high heels, her blond hair wound into a tight French twist. In fact, everything about Inès is wound tight, and it’s clear she has very little patience for Winifred, who’s so freewheeling you almost wonder how he can survive in the world. When Winifred’s dog dies, he shows up in Bucharest, at Inès’s door, with a rolly suitcase in hand and a set of giant false choppers in his breast pocket. Those crazy fake teeth go wherever he does—he pops them in whenever there’s a moment of tension, but more often just _because._ The funny teeth are old news to Inès, and she grudgingly tolerates them—and Winifred—before sending both back home. Or so she thinks. _Toni Erdmann_ is a comedy (mostly) that runs for nearly three hours. What sane person makes a two-hour-and-40-minute comedy? But Ade—who won the Silver Bear in Berlin in 2009 for her romantic drama _Everyone Else_—is in control every instant, and the minutes fly by. To say _Toni Erdmann_ is funny doesn’t even begin to capture the out-there texture of the jokes, and of the actors’ timing. When Winifred shows up in a disguise even more outlandish than his normal undergroomed state, posing as a life coach in order to shock and amuse his daughter’s hoity-toity friends and colleagues, she snaps at him: “Do you have plans in life other than slipping fart cushions under people?” Winifred replies, huffily, “I don’t have a fart cushion.” And then gets one, pronto. His antics wear her out at first, and then they wear her down. Eventually, accord is reached in the quietest and most believable way possible—it sneaks up on the characters, and on us. In the course of this strange and marvelous father-daughter cat-and-mouse game, Ade spins out dozens of luminous, shimmering ideas that speak to the way most of us live, and might even challenge us to rethink how we see our parents and our children. How far, really, does the apple ever fall from the tree? Are the flaws we see in our parents sometimes really a kind of strength? In a world that never slows down, let alone stop, how do we keep our work from sapping our lifeblood? Ade can’t answer any of those questions definitively, but the faces of her actors—sometimes quizzical, sometimes annoyed, ultimately alive with the kind of relief that comes only from jettisoning the BS of modern life—guide the way. 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