Helium

Beautiful story with the power of storytelling. I was amazed at how much emotional material the director managed to fit into this short film. Well done.

This movie undeniably shows the power of storytelling. The animation used to depict the imaginary world of 'helium' is just superb.

However, I feel like the 'real world' could have been better crafted. For example:

• show the cleaner apply for the job and lie on his experience as a cleaner
• get the cleaner to interact with other sick people, who are boring compared to the main child character
• the coffee scene with the colleague: why is the cleaner not in his uniform?Why would he have a jug of coffee for himself?
• the child character seems like a pretty down-to-earth logical child. Yet it looks like all of a sudden he throws away all his critical mindset as soon as he hears the new cleaner. He could have said in a sign of disbelief: 'I was never told this. How come you know and not my parents?'

Bo-focking-hoo. A young boy is dying. It's so saaaad (not really). Luckily, there's a dimwitted janitor there, to tell him stupid stories about a magical afterlife-place called Helium. Unfortunately, the relationship between these two is so forced, and the stories about Helium are so meaningless and without reference, that the movie becomes an unfunny parody of itself. And it doesn't take long before you're hoping the kid will just go ahead and croak already.

Sad music is smeared thickly as the boy's condition is worsening, and the filmmakers begs the audience for sympathy. Yet we're never given any reason to why we should care about this kid at all, other than him being a kid; which is just awful screen writing. But even if the script had been written in a smoother fashion, the fact that anyone would make a film of such a terrible concept in the first place, is mind-boggling. I mean, a dying kid? Really? Could you possibly be any less creative in your plea for emotions?

The overdose of sap is so severely lacking a pinch of anything cute, quirky or fun, that the whole thing ends up as something sticky you want to wipe off your shoe.

I feel dirty after having watched this crap.

when a little child boy who is suffering from an incurable disease and he is going to die in a few months,thinks "heaven looks like a boring place", how can you change the way he looks into the life after death? how can you help to make this journey a little more comfort for him? This is the story of Helium. Sometimes I think to myself hopes are some kind of lies, but I guess sometimes it is crucial to change our mind, the way we look into the problems makes us, makes how we are going to live,and how we are going to die, or maybe how we are going to live after this life! So I believe "Helium" which is another intent for Heaven-but it seems to be more fun,more fantastic and imaginable for a little kid who loves balloons and bored from a mental,abstract world called heaven- did a good job to make the audience rethink about the way they look into life and make them more precise about choosing their perspective to the life's events.

Helium (2013) is a Danish short film co-written and directed by Anders Walter.

Seven-year-old Pelle Falk Krusbæk plays Alfred, a young boy who is dying, and is afraid of death. Casper Crump portrays Enzo, a hospital janitor who bonds with the boy and tells him about a magical world called Helium where Alfred will go after death. Marijana Jankovic is the nurse who risks her job to allow Enzo to finish telling his story to Alfred.

I was amazed at how much emotional material director Walter managed to fit into this 23-minute--movie. Yes it's a tearjerker, but what's wrong with that?

Helium will work well on the small screen. It has a solid IMDb rating of 7.3. I thought it was much better than that and rated it 10. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences thought it was much better than that--Helium won the Oscar for Best Short film in 2014.