"Hilfe, ich bin ein Junge" or "Emmas Verwandlung" or "Help, I'm a Boy!" or "Verzauberte Emma" is a German 90-minute movie from 2002, so this one has its 15th anniversary this year. The director is Oliver Dommenget and it is definitely one of his more known works as a filmmaker. He is also one of the quite many people who worked on the script here. But sadly, eventually it is a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. This is especially disappointing as this could have been an innocent little fun movie with a solid touch of fantasy, but as a whole I must say they messed it up. Yes there are some solid parts and it is also not a problem that it is a really predictable film and you basically also know exactly what this is about given the title, but all this is perfectly fine if there had been more love to detail here. I will not discuss many scenes in particular, but let us take a look at that swimming pool, swimming competition scene because this was probably the moment when the film hit rock bottom. So much unrealistic things happen in this scene, the close result, the wrong technical aspect, the winner etc. They really sacrificed realism for fake feel-good moments and unauthentic drama there. This was so not necessary. I think the kids are doing a good job and the adults are okay too, even if a German Film Award nomination may definitely have been too much. But I just trust the awards body that Sellem did something more memorable in her other nominated film. Besides her, there are maybe 2 or 3 other known German actors in here that fans of German films will certainly have come across in other projects, like David Kross for example, but either their parts are completely insignificant or they are mostly forgettable. The negative outweighs the positive here and this is not on par with the many strong German kids films from the 21st century. Don't watch.
