Rennschwein Rudi Rüssel (1995)

Things are always chaotic in the Duisburg home of the Gützkow family. While their mother, Almut, earns a living as a teacher, their father, Heinrich, an unemployed Egyptologist, tries his hand at being a househusband. But Heinrich is all thumbs and can barely manage to open a can of ravioli. He also has no control over the couple’s three children, Betty, Zuppi and Tobi. At a volunteer fire brigade festival, the Gützkows win a piglet in a raffle. Heinrich doesn’t want a pig in the apartment and tries to abandon it on the way home. The children eventually persuade him to let the piglet move in with them; they name it Rudi Rüssel. But the very next day, their new pet wrecks the apartment. Heinrich therefore tries to get rid of it secretly, but once again the children talk him out of it. Hoping to spend a few relaxing days together, the Gützkows go camping with Rudi. When Zuppi and Tobi let their piglet bathe in the campsite’s swimming pool, driving all the other swimmers out of the water, the campsite attendant assigns the Gützkows a remote spot by a lake. Back in Duisburg, Almut and Heinrich go to a ball one evening. While the children watch Go Trabi Go on television, a burglar tries to break into the apartment. Rudi bites his hand, and the neighbors call the police. After the burglar is arrested, their landlord, Buselmeier, discovers the pig and promptly throws the Gützkows out. Finding a new place to live proves more than difficult, especially since Rudi has by now grown into a full-sized domestic pig. The family eventually moves into a house next to a soccer field, which Heinrich has to maintain in his new job as groundskeeper. But things go haywire in the new home, too. Almut has finally had enough and packs her bags. She stays temporarily with a colleague. When her colleague Dr. Walter makes advances toward her once again, she pours a glass of wine over his head. Meanwhile, at the sports field, Heinrich and the children notice how fast Rudi can run. They enter him in a pig race, and he immediately wins first prize. Almut sees Rudi in the newspaper and realizes how much she misses her family. When Rudi escapes and runs to the school, she decides to return home. To Almut’s surprise, she finds the house clean and tidy. When Rudi pulls down the trousers of Dr. Walter, who is refereeing a soccer match, he just manages to escape two men trying to catch him. He stops in front of a butcher shop window and is promptly loaded onto a trailer and taken to a slaughterhouse. When the Gützkows hear on the radio that Rudi is to be slaughtered, they immediately set off to save him. To get into the slaughterhouse, Heinrich gets himself a coat and pretends to be a veterinarian. He eventually finds Rudi with Betty and Tobi. Tobi also frees the other pigs, which soon run amok through the city before they escape on a forklift. Four months later, the Gützkows visit a farm where Rudi has fathered piglets in the meantime. Tobi secretly takes one of the piglets home as a new pet, and Heinrich announces that he has finally found a new job.