Extrawurst (2026) - Movie Review (watched today)
Film adaptation of the stage play by Dietmar Jacobs & Moritz Netenjakob.
At a tennis club members’ meeting, a pretty harmless decision spirals out of control. They want to buy a new grill, and suddenly someone suggests getting a separate grill specifically for the club’s only Turkish Muslim member. What’s presented as “well-meant” turns into a heated argument where everyone keeps talking, nobody really listens, and the mood gets uglier by the minute.
This is German comedy and satire, extremely dialogue-heavy, and totally built around language. That’s both the strength and the problem. A lot of the jokes only land if you understand German tone, subtext, and those very specific cultural reflexes. If you don’t live in Germany or you’re not truly fluent in German, I’d honestly recommend skipping it. It’s hard to translate because so much of it lives between the lines.
The acting worked for me. Hape Kerkeling is genuinely strong and completely believable. Christoph Maria Herbst, Fahri Yardım, and Friedrich Mücke were solid too. Anja Knauer gets a bit overshadowed by the men, which is a shame because she could’ve had more room.
You can really feel the stage-play DNA. At its core it’s basically five people escalating in a tight, almost chamber-piece setup. The theme of everyday racism is sometimes nailed and deliberately pushed to an uncomfortable point, but it didn’t feel especially deep to me. And the ending is very forced. It didn’t quite fit the rest, like they just needed to wrap it up somehow.
As a mirror of small-town club culture, it’s uncomfortably accurate.