Hardly any other company is as hated by the last generation as the Volkswagen Group. Activists have repeatedly tried to stop the conveyor belts with glue and shouting. It’s easy to imagine her opinion of some films that made her parents and grandparents laugh out loud: Can there be anything sillier than a film series about a glorified VW Beetle that conquers everything and everyone? This ultimate combustion engine idolization? In fact it can, namely two film series about glorified VW Beetles: the cheerful Disney version “Herbie” and its confused German counterpart “Dudu”, which is to “Herbie” like a donkey is to a horse. You want the young one Rigorists are too happy to fall into the arm that throws mashed potatoes: just look at the third “Dudu” film, “A Beetle on Extra Tour” (1973), the central problem has long since been solved. Jimmy Bondi and Aldo Regozzani run out of gas in the middle of London in pursuit of runaway stunt show operator Ivan Leskovich (well, that’s what they called a plot back then); Then Bondi – who is basically the same as the inventor, author, director and leading actor of the “Dudu” films, Rudolf Zehetgruber (always under a pseudonym) – grabs a huge winding key that he only has to turn a few times and the spring mechanism starts to move the bright yellow Fliewatüdelutüüt (identifying horn) is absolutely climate-neutral. Although only at walking speed, as the passenger – played by the magnificent Salvatore Borgese: stuntman and brawler, who you may know from the films with Bud Spencer and Terence Hill – constantly complains (“If we keep racing like this, we’ll be at the airport by Christmas”) , but that also ultimately meets the local speed limit requirement. “The first beetle that comes along kicks me in the ass.” Incidentally, this also applies to the “Dudu” film series in terms of narrative: it chugs along at a snail’s pace through wonderfully stupid story arcs. You have to look for a slower action film for a long time. The realistic speed of the VW Beetle (from 120 kilometers per hour your fenders would fly off) is one of the two main differences to its counterpart from overseas: While Herbie outpaces the sleekest racing cars at full speed in cartoons, Dudu – Swahili for “Beetle” – who only runs in the The first and fourth films drive veritable races, constantly overtaken, but make up for this disgrace with technical miracles, as the daringly tuned vehicle drives over rails, climbs almost vertical inclines, swims and later even flies. From the second film onwards he can fight with rims, door handles and steering wheels like Bud Spencer. He always does this when he is insulted (that’s just how he is programmed) – but the stupid villains just can’t help it. Until someone howls: “I have a bodyguard, and the first beetle that comes along will kick my ass.” In the film “Beetle On Extra Tour” (1973), Dudu also climbs the walls. Picture AllianceThere we have the second difference: “Dudu “ is a technology hack fantasy gone wild, a powerful hobbyist eulogy. From the second film onwards, “the cart” has an on-board computer and an AI, which Michael Knights K.I.T.T only developed ten years later. makes it look old. Herbie, on the other hand, is a beetle with feeling, a car that has come to life, which is why the “Herbie” films, produced and told a hundred times better, are simply motorized versions of the old Disney fairy tale (loneliness, love, salvation, betrayal, reconciliation, happy ending). , while the “Dudu” films, which by the way never take place in Germany, contain all the anarchic power of the 1970s. It just doesn’t matter, plot, optics, level; The main thing is that the atmosphere is right. And that’s true. There’s all the coolness of the 1970s films (“Put away the gun”, “Now you’re getting boiled”), but here it seems to be grounded in sympathy. Even if “Herbie” is supposed to be a “love bug,” it only means simple boy-meets-girl love (maybe boy/girl meets car); But in the German productions, a universal affection carries everything with it. The most scheming antagonists are lovingly screwed-up characters that you just have to like. Joachim Fuchsberger as the adored counterfeit money investigator And the crackle between the protagonist and the respective female lead is believable because this love is absolutely real. The protagonist was always played by Zehetgruber’s wife Kathrin Oginski. Whether as a selfless jungle doctor, an oil-smeared car mechanic, a kind-hearted nun or as a female “M” and “Q” symbiosis for this James Bond from the village (long before Judi Dench), she almost always ends up taking the prize money, ransom or otherwise raised Receive money to do good with. Their independence puts into perspective the sexism of the films, which quite simply consists in the fact that women like to be called “little ones” – even by Joachim Fuchsberger as an adored counterfeit money investigator (“I could forget that I could be your father” “And why don’t you do it?” ?”) – or that Jimmy couples two 2CV halves for two nuns to form a double duck that drives forward in both directions, “because they both always had difficulties with reversing”. There have been worse things. It’s funny and shows a disrespect for big business that is hardly conceivable today, to introduce Dudu in 1971 as a scrap Herbie broken in the middle, according to the plot of “The Love Bug” (1968), with the characteristic “53 ” on the door (“You’ve heard that all movie props are sold in Hollywood”). Of course, Zehetgruber’s special effects are so low-budget and lousy that you can’t help but laugh. Sometimes you can see the ropes on which Jimmy is lowered as he falls out of the flying Dudu, then the floating or snowy undercarriage of the beetle peeks out, or it becomes all too clear that a toy model has been thrown into the bushes. You can constantly see outrageously reused scenes from previous films, and continuity is almost deliberately ignored: completely different Beetle models can be seen several times before and after a cut, nothing fits together. In order to display external content, your revocable consent is required. Personal data from third-party platforms (possibly USA) may be processed. Additional Information . Activate external content The humor is also rattling with rear-wheel drive, which fascinates with its adorable harmlessness: “You, Ben, there are elephants in front with no trunks” (meaning hippos). You can understand that the “Lexicon of International Film” calls the films a “sloppy rehash of Disney films”, “clause that only meets very modest entertainment standards”, or “dull, tasteless entertainment with pile-ups” – and yet it is true to break a lance (or axis) for this film-artistically ruinous evaporation of creativity. Perhaps only in retrospect does it become clear what message was in the “Dudu” films: Everything is possible, you just need ideas, tools and confidence. What’s more, the films were about a world of cohesion, even including villains; they were themselves social glue.More on the topicOne small caveat must be made: The first film, “A Beetle Goes All Out” (1971), which takes place during the “East African Rally” and was clumsily blended with a safari film, is dramaturgical and visually so meschugge (not to mention the impossible portrayal of Africans who are either poachers, diamond thieves or blood drinkers) – Zehetgruber also plays another character, a jungle vagabond – that the real “Dudu” legacy probably only begins with “A beetle goes full throttle (1972) begins and ends again with the last Jimmy Bondi film, “The Craziest Car in the World” (1975). Because the latecomer, film five: “Two great beetles clean up” (1978), is a sham; Apart from a few reused scenes, it contains no beetle shots at all and is miserably lacking in its non-plot. But for three films, “Dudu” is an enchanting anarcho-fairy tale that lets you feel what an unadulterated promise of freedom was once associated with cars. What saves the series’ honor is that – in contrast to the smooth, irrelevant “Herbie Fully Loaded” (2005) – a “Dudu” remake was never attempted, even if or precisely because Zehetgruber died at an old age just a year ago. What the 1970s were, disappeared with the 1970s.
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