jesper_doolaard

The premise of this film seems alright enough and the trailer looks fun. So I got tricked into watching and found out it is, in fact, pretty dissapointing. Yes, the musical performances are decent. But the plot is shallow and lacks focus. Dave Lovelace is having fun with his role but otherwise the acting is mediocre.

Although on the surface this seems like should be about the women - it's really not. Men determine everything in the life of the Sapphires. The ending suggests that all is well when all the women are safely back home, all of them married off, no need to sing or perform anymore.

My girlfriend literally started crying at the end of this movie. She was offended and felt we had wasted a nice evening. Not recommended.

The feeling I got after this movie was (surprisingly): hey, this is not bad! Not bad at all - for Dutch horror. I must admit that I've never seen any other Dutch horror-movie to compare it to ('De Vierde Man' comes to mind, but that's a movie from the mid-'80s and i'd rather call it 'mystic' than 'horror') - but that doesn't matter much. What dóes matter is that this movie isn't bad at all.

All and all, the story-line is nothing spectacular. In fact, it's all been done só many times that if somebody'd quickly sum up the events of this movie, you'd expect it to be extremely boring. However, it's a fact that most of the time, in horror, clichés work great. And because the horror-genre isn't so terrible overdone here in the Netherlands, the people that made this movie have a fresh(ish) approach to all those clichés, and turn it into something that's quite enjoyable to watch.

So, strangely enough, here we have a film that's stuffed to the brim with cliché (even the most corny horror-line ever ('we're gonna have to split up') is used) but that's still enjoyable to watch on an otherwise lost Saturday-evening. And not ónly because it happens to be Dutch.

This movie must be one of the most overrated movies in the entire IMDb-database. OK, OK, i just said that to make a dramatic statement, but that's needed here. An almost-8/10? Come on!

Don't believe me? Look at the DVD-box itself. It prominently reads "Forget the Matrix!" while showing two characters in Matrix-like suites, with Matrix-like expressions, in a Matrix-like stance. But here's the scoop: this movie isn't any better than The Matrix. It doesn't even trý to be better than The Matrix. It just says that on the box. Rather, this movie wants to imitate the Matrix in every single way humanly possible, and to ride the wave of that trilogy's success. Doesn't that ring the B-film-bell in your brain? (Yes, it does.) A good (and grounded!) reason to let this movie be, in every movie store or whatever where you encounter it, until perhaps you find yourself in that particular mood where you just want to see bad movies for the sake of it. You know this mood you get sometimes, when you jut want to see crap on TV and laugh about how somebody thought this here little plot might work out on the big screen - but it doesn't? Yeh, that's when I rented this movie here.

What you get is what you can expect from the cover. It's something like 'The Matrix' versus Orwell's '1984' on lowish budget. Sure, that could have worked out alright. Combine a great movie with a great book and you get an awesome film, right?

Well.. not if you do it like THIS, though. It's slow-paced, has a weak plot fulla holes, weak acting by almost every actor (although that might have to do with the fact that most of them HAVE to act emotionless as it is part of the story), terrible action-scenes (i.e.: the first time the protagonist gets to show off his super-cool gun-shooting/fighting-abilities(?), it's in a completely dark room. He might have made some awesome moves, but i missed it, since it was.. well.. in a completely dark room. Also, the final fight, the climax of the entire movie, takes about ten seconds. TEN SECONDS, for what should have been a huge gory bloody Mortal Kombat-like rampage! Buh.), lame clichés (killing animals for sympathy is só..), dumb plot-twists, bad character-development, etcetera.

Overall, this movie was bad. Quite bad. It's not the worst ever, although i can name only a handful of other movies that made for such a dull hour 'n a half. It's just boring. It does attempt to be 'philosophical' in some sneaky way (just like The Matrix occasionally does, surprise surprise), but it doesn't make the point it probably wants to make (which would be something like 'emotion is good', I guess - how's that for a greater message, huh?).

Anyway, it most definitely did NOT make me forget about the Matrix.