Crazy

Crazy is a low-key youth film that gives a realistic insight into a teenage boy's problems with school, friends and girls. The story is rather episodic in structure, and a little more drama would not have hurt. It can become too humdrum.

Crazy is based on an autobiography by Benjamin Lebert, who was himself a teenager when he wrote and published the book. The protagonist Benjamin, known as Benni, is sent to boarding school, where he gets off to a difficult start because he is partially paralysed with spasticity in part of his upper body. He feels immensely awkward, and it does not help that he is also hopeless at maths, which he simply has to pass if he is to have any hope of getting an education.

Despite his disability and his shyness, Benjamin makes friends with a group of boys who, it turns out, all have problems of one kind or another. The most important of them is his roommate Janosch, who unfortunately is crazy about the same girl, Malen, with whom Benjamin has fallen in love.