What? Auf vollen Touren? The truck Didi is driving may be, but the film surely is not. The comedy never gets of the ground and successful jokes are few and far between. It perhaps could have been a mild satire on (political) corruption concerning chemical waste disposal, but now it an aimless and wearisome farce.
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J. Steed18 April 1999
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Horst_In_Translation25 August 2016"Didi auf vollen Touren" is a West German film from 1986 that includes French as well as German language. This one has its 30th anniversary this year and was directed by Wigbert Wicker (maybe his most known work) and a whole lot of screen writers. Sadly, we have a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth here as the film's story was not really too interesting. The reason why this film gets still sometimes aired on television is probably the fact that the lead actor here is Didi Hallervorden and he is as famous as ever, at least here in Germany. The movie runs for 90 minutes approximately and it is the story of a man who ends up driving a truck of dangerous cargo without knowing what is actually in the back of his truck. In order to make this film also a success with French (and not only German) audiences, they brought in French actor Bernard Menez, who becomes a co-lead next to Hallervorden fairly quickly as they spend all their scenes (inside and outside the truck) together.
I must say that I did not enjoy the watch that much. Yes Hallervorden elevated the material considerably and Menez is kinda fun too sometimes, but as a whole, the story was not really too great or entertaining. This is especially sad as I liked how they never tried to make an environmental statement with this film, but kept it strictly comedy. I also liked the ending message when we find out that basically nothing happened to the bad guys, which felt very realistic. And Hallervorden is just Hallervorden. How can you not like him! But the story and journey in this road movie has quite a few lengths and drags on several occasions and it is so frequent that not even Hallervorden can save the script. That's why I give this movie a thumbs-down overall. It is not a failure, but also nowhere near Germany's best from the 1980s or Hallervorden's best career works. Watch another film starring him perhaps.