Zot van A.

Saw this movie yesterday in...Metropolis Antwerp. As I've lived my whole life in Antwerp it's always a lot of fun when you see locations on a big screen that you know so well.

I didn't really know what to expect from this movie, so I just let it wash over me. And that was precisely the best attitude you can have when seeing this movie.

It doesn't rely on a deep story, but more on it's funny dialog ,one-liners and relationship issues. From the start we were just blown away by how funny the jokes were written in this movie. Also the delivery from the outstanding cast was very good.

Especially the older actor playing "Sinterklaas", this is a holly man that you can compare with Santa Claus/Father Christmas but he arrives from Spain on the 6th of December by boat with chocolates and mandarins. He has 2 or more helpers called black peters.

This character/actor raised the rating of the movie to brilliant as he is the worst with little children, but he's forced to be around them anyway.

There are a lot of good scenes that come up with him and it would be a shame to spoil them, but let's just say that there are 2 scenes that stand out : One is when he's trying to explain who "sinterklaas" is to an American black actor whose never heard of this holly man. So he goes and says something like: "Sinterklaas has some black men that are his slaves... and when kids are good we give them treats, but when they are bad we put them in a sack and hit them with a stick..."

Now you can imagine how this must come across for a black person in general... just terrible. But for those who know the tale of sinterklaas it's a lot of fun as we know what he means and it's not that he's wrong, he's just saying it wrong.

Another one is when he's trying to explain something about having children to little kid's, but he get's mixed up in his own stories and it turns out that pikachu (from Pokémon) had a little baby , etc,etc...

One little kid then points out that pikachu was a boy... so all the parents around are just laughing there *ss off and he goes like: "uh, yeah.. he WAS a boy but now he's a girl... uh... how this happened, I'll tell you in another story... "

Man oh man, brilliant if you hear this kind of speech... and there's a lot more of this going on.

Some other characters also have good lines but he blow them all away.

But then if you think back about the film, the sad thing is that it's really predictable, there are no plot changes as there's hardly a plot in the first place. It's more a "day in the life" kind of thing and it rests solely on it's script dialog.

Even just one hour after seeing the movie we forgot almost everything that had happened as it's just a roller-coaster of people coming across the screen and bumping into one another in the most bizarre circumstances.

This makes the movie somewhat forced to keep the ritme going but hey, I had a lot of fun watching it and I can advise anyone that just wants to see a light funny romantic movie to go see this one, lay back and enjoy.

9/10 for comedy and romance 5/10 for lack of story and plot which makes an even 7/10....

Best regards,

Raf

For those who have seen the original dutch version, it must me a terrible experience. Everything that was so good in the dutch version, went wrong in the BE version. First of all, the casting is not good. Although some of the actors are quite good actors, their characters do not match their capabilities. The chaotic switch between the different stories goes so well in the NL version, but doesn't seem to make any sense in the BE version. The editing and timing makes you loose all faith in the story. You simply cannot believe the story the way it's been put on the screen. It's a pity, since I love BE productions very much, but for an almost 100 percent copy (including dialogs), it's a bad job. If you like this kind of movies, which you should, don't waste two hours watching this one, but promptly choose the 'Alles is Liefde' version where casting fits, editing has uplifted the story and where you actually believe in "Love"

I went to see the movie based on the list of the cast. Some do it very well (Barbara safirian, Matthias Servu and Veerle Baetens) others are incredibly ridiculous like Kevin Janssens, Van Looveren and Sheepers. A super light and never intriguing story. This movie isn't worth mentioning. Compared to 'Aanrijding in Moskou' also with Barbara Safirian, this movie is like a last years students end work. I guess they will do even better. Sorry guys and girls, and shame on you for The Standaard, a Belgian quality newspaper, rating this movie 6 on 10 ! This movie must have cost a lot of money and will probably come back after-wards in a series on the TV screen on commercial TV station VTM, but it never goes further than the kids channel.