Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

In Danzig, the young Agnes (Angela Winkler) has a triangle of love with her Polish cousin Jan Bronski (Daniel Olbrychski) and the dealer Alfred Matzerath (Mario Adorf). She marries Alfred, but has a son, Oskar (David Bennent), with Bronski. On the day of his third birthday, Oskar decides to stop growing up. Along the next years, the family lives the life after World War I and before and during World War II and the rise and fall of the Nazi Party."Die Blechtrommel" is a bizarre cult-movie with a wonderful art direction, too long and boring surrealistic story and an annoying lead character. The movie has grotesque scenes and is senseless most of the time. The symbolism of the stuck German after WWI and the boy with a drum that refuses to grow-up is obvious but the 142 minutes running time entwined with disturbing and nonsense scenes give the idea of the intention of raising polemic to be in the spotlights. My vote is four.Title (Brazil): "O Tambor" ("The Drum")

Books incorporated with eccentric characters and theatrical events are destined to be transcribed onto the big screen, so internationally renowned (Poland-born) German writer Günter Grass' excellent epic novel expands around 20 years charting a boy Oscar's rite-of-passage dirge, who refuses to grow up at the age of 3 and remains in his diminutive figure in Danzig during last century's abhorrent wartime. Directed by reverend German director Volker Schlöndorff, the film fairly does justice to its namesake novel, and conflates the tumultuous vagaries of peoples' mindset (German vs. Pole) refracting from Oscar's eyes and the familial turmoil inflicts on Oscar's own psyche with unstrained imagination, cinematic impact and metaphorical embodiment. From the over-pressing opening drumbeats, the tale unwinds itself in its outlandish and surreal fashion with a chirpy tone, the delivery of Oscar is seen through a grotesque view from the infant baby inside the womb, reluctantly to set foot on this world until her mother promises give him a tin drum when he will be 3, then the morally-challenging ménage à trois of the family sickens little Oscar and he arbitrarily decides to stop growing at his 3-year-old birthday (not a potent prerequisite for the blunt decision, but it is requisite for the spurs to propel the story going into its right direction). With his glass-breaking screaming superpower and the tin drum he carries all the time, it bespeaks Oscar's official entry into a rebellious, warped world traumatized by the venomous war and moral forfeiture. The abnormal two-fathers with one-mother structure has been arduously recorded, but without conspicuously verbal elaboration (even it equivocates who is Oscar's biological father), the nativity of Oscar itself stands for a kind of incestuous madness which scourges both his mother and Polish uncle, there are many self-aware sequences when the three adults balancing a harmonious co-existence in the same space while smutty fondling needs no camouflage, it is not a sexual suppression case, it is a perverted mentality which is powerful enough to engender self-destruction. Oscar is the on-looker here and compulsorily poisoned by it, the trumpet strain during his mother and uncle's tryst (while Oscar is the indirect voyeur) and the subsequent outbreak of his super-scream and church profanity highlights the abnormality has deeply-rooted in his mind, when he reaches puberty, his sexual aggression outstretches his child-like appearance, the domestic fornication has its detrimental sequel, it is heavy fodder to be adapted on big screen, thanks for child actor David Bennent's fully commitment (although it seems not so healthy for a child to forbear all the precocious physical endeavor), the film's success is greatly indebted of the cast, Bennent's child-midget hybrid mien suffices the age-range required of his character (the soda-power ecstasy scenes are both gross and erotic), a nonpareil child-performance leaves its mark in the textbook, sometimes the cruelties and inscrutability appositely exude from his doe-eyes and innocent face, which is as fierce as any malevolence could achieve. Adult actors, namely Angela Winkler (mother), Mario Adorf (father) and Daniel Olbrychski (uncle), Katharina Thalbach (as the second wife and Oscar's first love) and Berta Drews (the square skirted grandmother) are all well-chosen and convincingly adept in their respective roles, French composer Charles Aznavour has a minor role as the Jewish toy shop owner, the stout provider of Oscar's tin drums. Running against 142 minutes, the film sustains its momentum along its journey, there are plentiful interpretations of all the characters' connotations correlating the milieu in lieu of Grass' delicate autobiographical delineation. Tragedies aside, the comic relief is the sporadic humor, for example, the interruption of the Nazi ceremony with the drum beats and waltz is sublime and ridicule, also when Oscar's Italian girlfriend-of-the-same-size wanted her morning coffee during a dashed-off fleeing, one could anticipate what will ensue but the benign mockery eclipses the grim emotion arc here and in a tall-tale like this, a sense of humor is alway being appreciated.

A 142 minute film that seems to go way longer in its horrible and tasteless moments "The Tin Drum" fails completely in a story that seems to have a meaning but it fails on how to show it. It is a pathetic, devious, diabolical, demented, derailed, deranged, dubious, flawed, shameful, disgusting, art pretentious and other adjectives that is best not to be written here. Unfortunately in this times of technology and internet someone who disagrees of a cult or brilliant thing is called a troll or things like that. I'm not a troll, and as you're gonna see in this comments many things that can be debated over this trash film awarded in 13 awards including the Oscars, I have a complete fundament about why this film failed in so many levels.How come someone can buy the story of an obnoxious and annoying little brat named Oskar and his desire of not growing up, and instead he keeps playing a little drum disturbing everybody and when he's vexed he screams like a opera falsetto and breaks all the glasses around him, scaring people away? It is said to many viewers and reviewers that he decides to stay aged three because of mankind's awfulness and madness, but at no moment before this story with the drum little Oskar watches this crazy world, everything bad happens later with the coming of the 2nd World War and other bad things that this character makes. To say that he's innocent is just silly. He's a diabolical creature that resembles Hitler in a way, immature figures who every time things doesn't happen in the way they want they scream higher and higher, and do bad things (Oskar will be responsible for many deaths through the film). And a creature coming out of the hell because he reminds of stories of angels who felt from the sky to become powerful among humans (Oskar fells from a ladder and after that he'll no longer grow, and someone needs to explain to me since when felling from stairs makes you no longer grow? I fell from a ladder when I was a child and that didn't changed a thing in me).For those who say that "The Tin Drum" used metaphors to show the horrors of war and Oskar represents so many things well, you're all wrong. These things wasn't presented this way. What does playing a drum means? What does the spitting change means? Why this boy is so special? He's not, he's annoying, inexpressive with a dangerous look in the eye (a look that reminds of Hannibal Lecter, Alex DeLarge and actor Bud Cort) and all I could think of was that I wanted to slap him in the face and say "Grow Up!". It is a very boring film, that even with two hours and a few minutes of running time it seems to go forever, and I had to divide the film in so many parts to absorb the whole thing to find that it didn't had nothing so special except some original and shocking scenes like the eels stuck in a horse's head found at a beach (the most disgusting thing you're gonna see in a non horror film) and then Oskar's family ate those eels; the first part of the story which was a little bit interesting (the opening is fantastic telling Oskar's grandmother story). Volker Scholendorff's film disappointed me big time! I heard so many favorable things about it (but I confess that I was blindfolded in terms of knowing what the story was, I only knew few things away) including the awards this film earned. And here's a reminder, awards don't mean that much. To think that this mess won Palm D'Or at Cannes (in a tie with the amazing "Apocalypse Now") and a Foreign Film Award at the Oscars (in a year that Germany's best film was "The Marriage of Maria Braun" recognized by German critics as one of the best of that period and to think that Rainer Werner Fassbinder never was nominated) is unthinkable! It is the worst film ever awarded at the Foreign Film category. Not just this film shows how awards are almost meaningless, jewels like "E La Nave Va", "Pixote", "Vargtimmen" and all Kieslowski films are all outstanding works of art that weren't nominated for an Oscar and those films had so much more to tell, to show, to stay in our memories, and if you haven't seen them skip "The Tin Drum" and go see them! Trust me, it's all good.There's so many wrong things with this film that I cannot say which was the worst but perhaps the concerns on under age sex scenes (which caused many problems with future releases in certain countries). Nowadays this film is totally incorrect with those moments, I dare to say that Schloendorff became a phedofiliac figure in filming those things (it's not graphic, but it certainly makes you feel bothered). I haven't read the book in which this was adapted and I don't think I will, it is such a pointless and bad story that I don't wanna see it twice. Run for your life because after that you might get depressed as fast as I am now. 2/10

Do you dismiss a movie because it is strange? Some do, and rate this film as a story about an obnoxious little boy who goes around banging a drum and breaking glass.Firstly, the performance of David Bennent as Oskar was phenomenal. As an 11 or 12 year old, he played a part from infancy to 21. Maybe he was obnoxious, but I choose to believe that he was making a powerful statement about the undesirability of growing up in a world where adults do not act very adult.Set against the backdrop of WWII, it can also be viewed as rebellion against war and fascism.Strange, sometimes evil, but nevertheless a powerful film that should be seen by all.