Mein Onkel Theodor (1975)

The easygoing Traugott Wurster is a sluggish sort, an out-and-out layabout. Mrs. Wurster has to toil away at work day in and day out, while Traugott stays home, sprawled on the bed or couch, pretending to look after their six children. One day, it finally happens: Traugott falls into a kind of prolonged comatose sleep. Since no one is now able to look after the Wurster children at all, Traugott’s wife decides to parcel the little ones out among their relatives. But she also has an idea for making money from her snoring husband. Mrs. Wurster rents out the sleepyhead Traugott to a furniture store, which can proudly display him in its window as an advertisement for beds and mattresses. Like at the zoo, people can come by and watch Traugott sleep. Before long, the snoring Traugott is the sensation of the town. Meanwhile, Markus Wurster has been passed on to Traugott’s brother, the titular Uncle Theodor, who lives in another city. He is a self-declared hater of children, a miser and a stick-in-the-mud, impossible to please, whose know-it-all, pedantic ways get on everyone’s nerves. To make matters worse, his wife Erika is expecting a child of her own. Theodor now gets the chance to get used to his role as a father and practice dealing with the “little darlings.” But Uncle Theodor learns. In the end, he has even become a passionate lover of children, and Traugott also wakes up from his prolonged sleep. But he is utterly astonished to discover that he has, quite literally, become rich in his sleep.