Dinosaurier - Gegen uns seht ihr alt aus! (2009)

Retired teacher Lena Braake falls behind on the final payments for her home on Windmühlengasse because her pension has recently started arriving only in the middle of each month. She wants to travel and asks her bank to issue her traveler’s checks. A bank employee, however, cuts up her credit card, so Lena goes to see her account manager, Tobias Hardmann. With a trick, he manages to sell Lena an additional loan, supposedly to help her cover her payments on the side. Not long afterward, Lena Braake has lost not only her savings but her house as well. With no other choice, she moves into the Haus Sonnenruh retirement home. There she meets Johann Schneider, who is celebrating his 80th birthday. He makes himself out to be in need of extensive care and bedridden, but in reality he is a remarkably spry retiree. He falls in love with Lena, who reminds him of an early love from his youth. When he learns that she could no longer pay off the €80,000 mortgage on her house because the bank cheated her, he wants to help. He once lost €80 million in business and knows the workings of the “other side.” Several times, he manages to sneak out of the home with Lena. On a seniors’ outing to the city’s Natural History Museum, their driver, Tom Szymanski, lets them make a detour to Lena’s house. Johann Schneider has promised to make Tom rich in return—and intends to keep his word. At Lena’s house, they see Tobias Hardmann trying to use a trick to persuade Lena’s neighbor, Victor Semlitsch, to sell his house. They both realize that the entire row of houses is to be demolished to make way for a shopping center. They persuade Victor Semlitsch to sell them his house for €210,000 no later than a month from then. Until that point, he also refuses to accept the bank’s offer, the amount of which Victor does not reveal to them. Lena and Johann disguise themselves as eccentric antiques dealers and go to the bank that had cheated Lena before. Johann has taken the nursing home attendant Piretti’s Rolex, which impresses the receptionist. She agrees to arrange the loan of €250,000 they want, but Tobias Hardmann, who arrives shortly afterward, insists on a guarantor. Lena and Johann decide to take over Johann’s son Alexander’s office during lunch, invite Tobias in, and present Siegfried, a fellow resident of the retirement home pretending to be Alexander, as a guarantor. Alexander must not find out, since he has long been trying to have the supposedly frail Johann declared legally incompetent. The trick works at first, but Siegfried, who is diabetic, eats huge amounts of sugar during a hypoglycemic episode, so when he meets with Tobias, his blood sugar is dangerously high and he is barely responsive. When Alexander unexpectedly returns early from lunch, he finds his father, among others, in the waiting room outside his office. In desperation, Johann says he is ready to sign the guardianship papers immediately. While Johann and Alexander go to the notary, Tobias calls the bank and gives his approval for the loan. Lena and Johann then take the money to Victor Semlitsch. Just as he is about to sign the sales contract, he suffers a heart attack and dies. His granddaughter, who has come to visit, immediately calls Tobias Hardmann and agrees to sell the house to the bank—Tobias had offered Victor €500,000 for it. Lena and Johann are ready to give up, but Lena has one last, audacious plan. They steal a dinosaur bone from the Natural History Museum and bury it on the Windmühlengasse property, where the bank is soon planning to hold a celebration and a symbolic groundbreaking ceremony for the new shopping center. Lena, Johann, Siegfried, and Hildchen, a retired woman, attend the event posing as the prospective major investor Schwertlein and the bankers Tobias has arranged. Tobias had actually been expecting his college friend Jo Schwertlein, but Lena and Johann pretend to be Jo’s parents. They say Jo is heavily addicted to drugs and currently in a coma. In fact, he has eaten some of Lena’s cookies laced with sleeping pills. During the event, the dinosaur bone is discovered. More residents of the retirement home then appear in various roles, including as an archaeologist, a historic-preservation official, and a radio reporter, and make it clear to the bank that the properties are now worthless. Lena and Johann draw up a new purchase contract in which they buy all the Windmühlengasse properties from the bank for the symbolic sum of one euro. The properties then pass into Tom Szymanski’s ownership. The bank officials sign, grinding their teeth. Not long afterward, Johann Schneider is arrested for his actions. But because his son has had him declared legally incompetent, he cannot be held liable and is released shortly afterward. In a letter, he explains to Alexander the reasons behind his actions. Lena has her house back, and Johann hints that he is now somewhere far away—he has not died, but is on vacation by the sea with the great love of his life, Lena.