Die unabsichtliche Entführung der Frau Elfriede Ott (2010)

Horst is a “perpetual student” in Graz who grew up with his grandmother after his parents died. When his grandmother became seriously ill, he took care of many things for her, including her banking. After she eventually died, he illegally continued collecting her pension, which paid for a four-month holiday in Thailand and, more generally, a carefree life in his late grandmother’s apartment. After a while, Horst’s friend Toni moved in too. Toni once co-managed a rural dance café and now wants to make money by renting out a white stretch limousine he has bought. So far, however, he has used the large vehicle purely for private purposes—for example, for trysts with Horst’s girlfriend Karin. Two years after Horst’s grandmother died, a local politician announces that he will personally visit to congratulate her on a milestone birthday. Since Toni has neglected the housework and the mail, Horst only finds the letter a few hours before the politician is due to arrive. What can they do to keep the fraud from coming to light? Since they also receive care allowance for the grandmother, they cannot use the excuse that she is away on holiday. Horst and Toni therefore have to find a “borrowed grandmother” as quickly as possible, just for 15 minutes, until the politician leaves. The only way they can think of to do this immediately and “without complications” is to “borrow” an elderly woman from a hospital and return her as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the culturally unsophisticated Toni happens to pick the famous actress Elfriede Ott, who had been admitted to the hospital after a stage accident and was sitting around in a wheelchair. Before that, the nymphomaniac nurse Veronika had sedated her in order to get the password to her savings account. Her rightly jealous boyfriend Gerry is the car dealer who sold Toni the limousine and is still waiting to be paid. Unfortunately, he had cheated Hungarian criminals and is now being pressured by them. Inspector Kramer, who is called to the hospital, happens to have been Gerry’s classmate. Because of the major police operation, returning the borrowed Frau Ott proves much more complicated than the two men had hoped. Seeing no way to get the famous actress back to the hospital unnoticed, they make the best of a bad situation and demand a ransom for the “kidnapped” actress. But Ott’s nephew, Reinhard Meinhard Ott, is not at all unhappy that his overbearing aunt has disappeared, and has no intention of paying anything for her. On the contrary, when they meet to hand over the ransom, he tries to shoot Frau Ott. In the end, there is a showdown in Horst’s apartment, where everyone gradually arrives. In this grotesque finale, parts of the action are sung like an operetta. When Karin confesses her relationship with Toni, Horst even tries to shoot him with Reinhard’s gun, but is stopped. Reinhard Meinhard Ott ends up in prison, Toni moves in with Karin, who is pregnant by him, and they form a three-way relationship with Malou, Dirschl’s African assistant. Frau Ott takes Horst under her wing and also pays all his fines.