This is a pleasant if little film about a young girl who, while awkward and friendless, has a secret crush on the prince of Luxembourg, and hopes to impress him by trying out for the high school basketball team. I don't know how ridiculous that sounds if you haven't seen the movie, but it's not the film's plot line that's charming, but rather the great performances of the young cast, especially Zoe Moore. Moore stars as Nelly Sue Edelmeister, a half German, half Jewish-American girl who belongs to Berlin's growing Jewish population. She doesn't care much for religion, though, and spends much of the film trying to get out of having a Bat Mitzvah. Her real interest is science. She dreams of one day being an astronomer and the movie has a few great special effects shots in which Nelly imagines she's walking among the stars, forming new constellations that uncannily resemble her unattainable dreamboat, Prince Edoard. Later in the film she realizes that the prince is for the birds, when she slowly falls for new-kid-in-town (and basketball expert) Max Minsky. Though the performances were nice, the movie still felt really derivative at times. The whole "genius nerd tries out for sports team to impress an older member of the opposite sex" was perfectly captured in 1986's LUCAS. I also must wonder why the filmmakers chose to cast Adriana Altaras as the "American" mom. According to the IMDb, she is Croatian and grew up in Italy and Germany. The scenes where she had to speak English were extremely hard to buy. She's probably a fine actress, but why cast somebody as a New Yorker if they can't even really speak English? Another gripe I had with the film was the film's soundtrack. At first I thought it was really nice. I then realized that I enjoyed the soundtrack a little TOO much, and now I know why: It's melodically and instrumentally similar to Mark Mothersbaugh's work for Wes Anderson and Yann Thiersen's work in "Good-bye Lenin", both two of my favorite composers. The melodies were just different enough to avoid plagiarism, but the similarities were uncanny. Overall, a cute little movie with a star in the making, but not the most original piece to come along. It is indeed quite nice to see a modern depiction of Jewish families in Germany, and the family friendly tone of the movie makes it one foreign film worth bringing the kids to see.
2 Reviews
Basketball, royals and mediocrity
Horst_In_Translation7 May 2017
Warning: Spoilers
"Max Minsky und ich" or "Max Minsky and Me" is a German movie from 2007, so this one has its 10th anniversary this year. The director is Anna Justice and this is probably her second most known work after "Die verlorene Zeit". The script is by Holly-Jane Rahlens who actually adapted her own novel for the screen here. And the 95-minute outcome resulted in a great deal of awards recognition, for example also at the German Film Awards, even if it lost the Children's Film Award to "Leroy". Maybe this one here is even slightly better as I am not a great fan of Leroy either. But still this does not mean this was a good watch here. Lead actress Zoe Moore has some good moments, some not so good and same can be said about her male co-lead Emil Reinke as well as the film as a whole. The general idea is nothing too innovative, but could have brought up the possibility for a solid kids movie. But the attention to detail in many scenes is just not particularly good at all. Plus there are several plot developments thrown in that never felt too authentic, but just for the sake of it, which especially refers to most of the parents' interaction with the kids. They did not give the intended depth, but just weak scenes for the most part. The film is probably at its best when the two protagonists have it for themselves. the main antagonist, the female bully, is as generic and forgettable as it gets. The relationship drama when the male central character finds out that the female protagonist just wanted to see the royal boy and that's why she wanted to learn how to play basketball. Oh it's such a tragedy that she did not learn it for Reinke's character, isn't it? Doesn't make any sense and this part being intended to serve as the biggest conflict towards the end was just not working at all and it left a really negative note on the film as a whole. Like I wrote, there was definitely potential for more here, but all in all it is just too generic and mostly (slightly altered at times) stuff that has been done before and frequently better. And the performances aren't good enough either to make a difference. I may have given this film a better rating if it had kept the level of the first 45 minutes, but it did not. Therefore I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
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