You would think that after someone has literally been off the screen for more than a decade, interest would eventually wane. But puff cake! Even eleven years after “Stromberg – The Film” (more than 1.3 million tickets sold) and even 13 years after the last “Stromberg” season, the fascination for the Germans' favorite boss seems unbroken: Not only is no one in the offices from Berlin to Wanne-Eickel quoted anywhere near as often as the former deputy head of claims settlement at Capitol Insurance. His politically incorrect sayings on TikTok are now reaching a whole new generation, who are also celebrating the bald man with the toilet seat beard (officially: Henriquatre).
The decision not to immediately add a sixth season or a second film always rested with the main actor, who did not want to be definitively committed to his star role. Thanks to hits like “Der Vorname” or “Der Buchspazierer”, Christoph Maria Herbst can now be sure that he will always get other parts. So it was high time for more Stromberg – and the advertising partnerships already show that it's not too late for that: anyone walking through the streets can't miss Bernd Stromberg, who can be seen on posters munching on either burgers or peanut flips – and of course companies like McDonalds or Lorenz don't spend such budgets without doing extensive market research first.
So there is no question: the time and the nation are ripe for “Stromberg – Everything as usual again”! But is the film any good?
Bernd Stromberg (Christoph Maria Herbst) and his ex-Capitol colleagues are invited to the big reunion show in the TV studio.
Let's get started completely meta – because we mustn't forget that the Capitol employees were always accompanied by a documentation team in their everyday office life. These recordings made it to the broadcast years ago and now it is time for a big reunion show, moderated by “Schlag den Raab” legend Matthias Opdenhövel. The focus is, of course, on Bernd Stromberg (Christoph Maria Herbst), who was fired by his ex-employer and who has now found a job at the multi-purpose company Alpha, which is highly modern in terms of HR methods. Ulf (Oliver Wnuk) and Tanja (Diana Staehly), on the other hand, are still working for Capitol – only SHE has made a career while HE hasn't made any progress in all these years.
Meanwhile, Berthold alias Ernie (Bjarne Mädel) has written the anti-bullying bestseller “You Are Not a Victim” – and has built a new career as a life coach on it. Jennifer (Milena Dreissig) is no longer working in her old job, but instead supports her younger lover Julian (László Branko Breiding) in his content creator career. When we meet again in the public temple of hits, the same communicative rifts as back then in the Capitol office quickly open up. But then the people protesting against chauvinism and the Stromberg fanboys wearing fake beards clash outside the TV studio gates – and the whole thing threatens to be called off before it's even really started…
Is it even allowed to show something like that anymore?
Let's start with this: Where Michael “Bully” Herbig adapted his humor in “The Canoe of Manitu” to a certain extent to the sensibilities of the year 2025, “Stromberg” mastermind Ralf Husmann makes no compromises in his script for “Everything as usual again” – even if he tries to use small tricks here and there in order to be able to fit in the old punch lines: Right at the beginning there is a young TV editor (Sophia Burtscher), who literally loses her faith when she looks through the old “Stromberg” episodes in order to find suitable scenes to play in the reunion show. And of course today's cinema audience still laughs just as loudly as the initially not so large, but then steadily growing and extremely loyal audience of the original broadcasts on ProSieben once did.
But where the leadership aphorisms are still just as politically incorrect, cynical and cringe As usual, “Stromberg” director Arne Feldhusen is still taking a new course with “Everything as usual again”: Anyone who is only interested in collecting new “Stromberg” sayings because their colleagues can no longer hear the old ones after all these years is probably in the wrong place. The second film dares too much for that: first with its clever meta-commentaries – and then with one Meltdown road trip down Memory Lanewhich is still bitterly funny, but in its melancholic, grounded way it is sometimes even more disturbing than the recognizable over-the-top freakouts of earlier days.
This brings back memories of the “Joker”: Bernd Stromberg and his group of fanboys, which are not only made up of men…
After his literary self-discovery, Ernie is no longer available for the usual bully attacks. So it's Stromberg himself who, despite all his misogynistic, xenophobic and asshole-like sayings, gets to taste his own medicine this time – and loses all stability even more than usual. In addition to the “Vegähn” jokes, there is a melancholy that one would not necessarily have expected in a “Stromberg” film, but which, as a conclusion (?), fits surprisingly well into the 21-year franchise history. This becomes particularly clear when the film jumps back to Ernie's suicide attempt, which only failed by chance, in the episode “Emissions Inspection”.
Of course, Bernd Stromberg will learn absolutely nothing from this. But we were rarely this close to developing unironic sympathy for him…
Conclusion: Everyone is getting older – and so the new “Stromberg” is often more painfully melancholic than hilariously funny. In his second feature film, the sitcom desk criminal even mutates into the German answer to “Joker” (complete with a Stromberg mask-wearing lookalike hooting on the streets). Anyone who stays seated until after the credits roll will at least get a milkshake from McDonalds as a glimmer of hope – and so everything isn't as usual, but in a really fucked up way it somehow seems forgiving.