Guys and Balls
| Männer wie wir | |
|---|---|
 Männer wie wir film poster | |
| Directed by | Sherry Horman |
| Written by | Benedikt Gollhardt |
| Produced by | Kirsten Hager |
| Starring | Eileen Eilender Leon Breitenborn |
| Distributed by | Regent Releasing |
Release date | 7 October 2004 (Germany) |
Running time | 106 min. |
| Language | German |
Männer wie wir ("Men Like Us"; US title Guys and Balls) is a 2004 sports comedy/romance by German-American director Sherry Hormann about a gay goalkeeper who assembles a gay-only soccer team to play against his ex-team which fired him out of homophobia.
Ecki (Maximilian Brückner) lives with his parents who own a bakery in a small German town near Dortmund. Football, the German national pastime, is particularly popular in this heavily industrialized region and Ecki has been an avid and successful player since his childhood days.
In a decisive game, he fails to keep a ball and is then evicted from the team, with his mistake being used to cover the real reason—the revelation that he is gay that comes about when he is observed by some of his teammates kissing another man on the mouth.
Ecki is defiant and immediately sets out to form his own team and beat his ex-teammates at their game. Meanwhile, he also manages to win the heart of dreamboy Sven (David Rott), who becomes his first boyfriend. Training of the team is done by Karl (Rolf Zacher), an ex-soccer player himself who quit the sport after a defeat similar to Ecki's.
When the big day of the game comes, the match starts out badly for Ecki's team, but ultimately they are able to triumph over his old teammates by allowing their homophobia to turn against themselves. Template:Endspoiler
With homophobia in German professional sports (and also among the sports fans) being just as rampant as in many other countries and the disdain of many "out" gays to be involved in an activity that they perceive to be associated with homophobia and preferring to form their own clubs instead, the film's theme, despite adhering to the standards of comedy, resonates with reality and is not as outrageous as it may seem. While this movie is officially endorsed by the Borussia Dortmund soccer club, individual pro soccer players have stayed tellingly mum about it.
Männer wie wir may also be regarded as the first major German sports comedy. While this genre is far more established in the United States with movies such as Hard Ball (2001) or The Mighty Ducks (1992) in which an underdog team is posed to somehow find the spirit to win an important game against a far superior opponent, these kinds of movies are relatively rare in German cinema. It may therefore not be surprising that this particular movie was made by an American-born director.