Zweiohrküken

Zweiohrküken (literally "two-eared chicks") is a 2009 German romantic comedy directed by Til Schweiger and the sequel to his box-office hit Keinohrhasen (2007). It continues the story of the mismatched couple Ludo (Til Schweiger) and Anna (Nora Tschirner), now two years into a relationship that has settled into routine, and it was released in German cinemas on 3 December 2009.^{1 • 2}

Title and connection to the series

As in the first film, the title refers to a stuffed animal that Ludo crafts in the kindergarten where Anna works: where the "earless rabbit" of Keinohrhasen was incomplete, the two-eared chick is complete in itself but receives unexpected offspring.^{6 • 8} The day-care set in both films was the Rosenvilla in Paretz, a village of about 400 inhabitants roughly 40 km west of Berlin.⁶ The stuffed animals from the two films later supplied the premise for a separate 70-minute 3D animated children's comedy developed by Schweiger.¹⁰

Production

The film was produced by Til Schweiger's company Barefoot Films GmbH (Berlin) in co-production with Warner Bros. Entertainment GmbH (Hamburg), SevenPictures Film GmbH (Unterföhring), and Rothkirch Cartoon Film (Berlin), with Thomas Zickler and Til Schweiger as producers and Stefan Gärtner as co-producer; Jochen Ketschau handled editorial and line-producer duties for SAT.1.⁵ The original distributor was Warner Bros. Pictures Germany GmbH (Hamburg), and the film received support from the Deutscher Filmförderfonds (DFFF).⁵ Crew United lists the DFFF grant as 860,000 euros.³ The critic.de review adds that the FFA contributed 550,000 euros and the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg 900,000 euros, so the film was financed to a considerable extent by public funds.¹¹

The crew included Christof Wahl as director of photography (also credited as co-director), Constantin von Seld as editor, and Dirk Reichardt, Mirko Schaffer, and Daniel Nitt for the music.^{1 • 4} The original version ran 3,401 meters (124 minutes) in 35 mm at a 1:2.35 ratio with Dolby sound, and passed German age rating (FSK) on 16 November 2009, approved from 12 years.¹

Cast

Til Schweiger plays the former tabloid reporter Ludo and Nora Tschirner the kindergarten teacher Anna, repeating their lead roles from Keinohrhasen. The supporting cast includes Ken Duken as Anna's ex Ralf, Edita Malovčić as Ludo's ex Marie, Matthias Schweighöfer as the photographer Moritz, Heiner Lauterbach as Herb, Uwe Ochsenknecht as Dr. Eisenberger, Pegah Ferydoni as Lana, Jasmin Gerat as Caro, and Schweiger's daughter Emma Schweiger as Cheyenne-Blue. Cameos and bit parts include the musicians Paul van Dyk, Thomas Kretschmann, and Wladimir Klitschko as themselves.^{12 • 13 • 9}

Release and reception

Schweiger's production company Barefoot Films barred all press screenings before the release, a move the critic.de review compared to the aggressive marketing around Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno (2009) and criticized because of the film's substantial public funding.¹¹ Nevertheless, the film reached number one in the German cinema charts in its first week.⁶ The Deutsche Film- und Medienbewertung (FBW), whose awards are decided by independent juries of five film experts, unanimously gave it the Prädikat wertvoll, praising the entertaining comedy about well-observed relationship madness.⁷

Critical reception was mixed. The Filmdienst review judged that the comedy, hanging from gag to gag, could not generate fresh punchlines from worn-out gender clichés and paid little attention to consistency in its character development.⁴ The critic.de review found the film fell noticeably short of its predecessor, lacking drive, with a physically palpable sluggishness toward the foreseeable happy ending.¹¹ The FBW text, by contrast, highlighted the film's humorously staged, familiar relationship problems and its slapstick, cheeky wordplay, and well-known German cast.⁷

The film's German television premiere followed on 5 December 2010 on Sky Cinema.¹⁴ Home-video releases include a Blu-ray bundled with a plush chick and combined DVD editions with Keinohrhasen.⁶

References

1. Zweiohrküken, filmportal.de
2. Zweiohrküken, Moviepilot
3. Zweiohrküken, Crew United
4. Zweiohrküken, Filmdienst
5. Zweiohrküken (Rabbit Without Ears 2), filmportal.de English edition
6. Zweiohrküken, fernsehserien.de
7. FBW Prädikat wertvoll: Zweiohrküken, Deutsche Film- und Medienbewertung
8. Zweiohrküken, Cinestar
9. Zweiohrküken, kino&co
10. Filmstiftung NRW magazine on Keinohrhasen und Zweiohrküken (3D)
11. Zweiohrküken – Kritik, critic.de
12. Zweiohrküken, Apple TV
13. Zweiohrküken, cinema.de
14. Zweiohrküken, TV Wunschliste

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Franchise and series entries as standalone works › Teen and comedy series film entries › Entries released in the 2000s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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