The fictional musical Springtime For Hitler in The Producers offered a "Hitler with a song in his heart." Dani Levy's farcical romp My Führer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler may not deliver a Hitler with a song in his heart, but it certainly delivers a new Hitler for the millennium -- a clownish and sympathetic Führer in a lumpy jogging suit, whose execution of six million people and waging of total war is explained away by an abusive father and self-esteem issues.

Levy's film takes place over a five-day period during Christmas 1944, when Berlin is a sea of rubble. The ever scheming Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) pulls Jewish acting teacher Adolf Grünwald (the great Ulrich Mühe, in his final screen appearance) out of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp to coach a depressed Hitler (comic Helge Schneider) to regain his inner fire as he prepares for an impassioned New Year's Day speech intended to mobilize the masses to continue supporting the war. Grünwald agrees, while secretly planning to kill Hitler, but Goebbels has plans of his own.

Levy is clearly inspired by Chaplin's The Great Dictator, Ernst Lubitsch's To Be Or Not To Be, Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful, and Mel Brooks's entire oeuvre. Perhaps the inspirations are a bit too close: The finale could be a rough draft for the final scene of The Great Dictator, and a bit with all the Nazis heiling each other (Goebbels finally tells an adjutant to knock it off while Hitler says "Heil myself" and "Heil me") could have been taken from Brooks's musical version of The Producers.

There are some fine moments of dark hilarity in My Führer: The sad and lonely Hitler crawls into bed with Grünwald and his wife, whereupon she sings Hitler to sleep with a Jewish lullaby, right before attempting to smother him with a pillow; later, Hitler loses his voice on the day of his speech after launching a verbal tirade against a hapless barber for mistakenly shaving off half his mustache. But these occasions are few and far between. Most of the time, Levy holds back and doesn't let the lunacy take him where it should.

Instead, Levy opts for Hitler as a nebbish. Aside from Grünwald and his family, Hitler is the most sympathetic character in the picture. Levy sets up the caricature, but then quickly gives it a mawkish spin. Hitler has childhood issues. Hitler has to sneak out of his bedroom. Hitler is depressed about the war and the deaths. This sad sack character dulls the film's punch. When it comes to the Holocaust, you can't have it both ways -- check Schindler's List as an example.

This is not to say that Levy can't come up with a jaw-dropping moment when he wants to. In a scene in which Grünwald has Hitler down on all fours and barking like a dog, a quick shot reveals Goebbels observing Hitler through a one-way mirror. Distracted by something, Goebbels looks away at the moment when his dog Blondi begins to raise himself up behind Hitler's backside. Here is one shot you won't find in Leni Riefenstahl.

Aka Mein Führer - Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit Hitler.



Heil on earth.