Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
This is a 7-year-old kids movie (girls movie) which runs for roughly 90 minutes. The cast is pretty famous: Engelke, Klocke (love him), Kessler, Rohde and one of the Ochsenknecht boys (although the latter shouldn't be famous). And lead actress Emilia Schüle (Russian-born and very stunning, looks like a young Mandy Moore) is famous today as well, one of the most known actresses from her generation, but yet fairly unknown when this film came out. Her two friends (Müller, Nagel), however, did not manage a significant career after this movie. The filmmakers behind this project aren't nobodies either. The director worked on "FC Venus", kinda fits with the tone of "Freche Mädchen" and the writer also worked on "Napola", a totally different genre though.This film has basically all you would expect, all kinds of girl drama involving poetry, friendship and of course boys and not to forget crushes on teachers. Sadly, the teacher was more interested in the girl's mother. Early in the film, there was a pretty nice version of "Amazing Grace". However, there are not many more recommendable aspects about this feature. It is rarely funny and also I did not really cheer as much for the main character as I hoped. The only good thing is that, in the end, they did not try to convince us that Ochsenknecht's character would be Pegasus and read Rilke. Bad enough already that they try to convince us that he is the object of desire for all the girls in his class. And then there also is a talent contest, which really added nothing to the movie and just felt as filler material, so they would make it to 90 minutes in my opinion. And there was more. The beating-up scene with Kati and her ex- and future boyfriend near the end was really the negative highlight. The final kiss between Schüle's character and her Pegasus wasn't much better either. Extremely over-the-top.There are really many fairly good German kids movies out these days, but this one here is not among them, mostly because the comedy is not working at all and the drama near the end did not wow me either. The title could actually be translated as "Mean Girls", but the action is a lot worse and not half as interesting. Most of this may be due to the novel that this film is based on not being great either. i don't know, I have not read it, but I really cannot imagine an experienced writer like Peren turning a good book into a weak movie like this one here. They made a sequel which came out two years after this and I will watch and review it soon as well. I hope it is better than the original.
