Costa!

It is a typical Dutch habit to dislike anything that comes from Holland. I guess we are too much of a Calvinist country to be able to enjoy anything that we made ourselves. That is why we chased away people like Paul Verhoeven who's films were completely slaughtered by the Dutch critics.

Johan Nijenhuis' film Costa! is a very entertaining and masterly constructed film that is aimed to please. In a genre (romantic comedy) that was not made before in Holland, combined with all the local Dutch stars you can think of and an American-like marketing campaign it is one of the best Dutch films I have seen in years and can be compared with the likes of Coyote Ugly and She's All That. It's result on the Dutch audience equals that of films like Saturday Night Fever and Dirty Dancing.

Hopefully the Dutch film industry is finally growing up.

I've seen this film a few weeks ago, just because else we had to wait 2 hours before The Exorcist -Director's Cut- was about to begin. So we went to Costa for 90 minutes. I have to say, it was a really feeling great movie. Ok, nothing happens, nothing looks like REAL, but hey, it feels like you're on vacation yourself. Not a spectacular movie, but fine to me, and by the way, i liked it more than the Exorcist after.

Costa! 7/10

As my brother always says, "you are not allowed to like a film like this". But who says life has to be taking so damned seriously? This was 95 minutes of pure entertainment. Okay, lots of teenagers just loved it, but I sat next to a guy who only came in to the theater to watch the trailer to "Lord of the Rings", and even this guy couldn´t help liking this film. He just kept that grin on his face all through the movie. No wonder this film is breaking records in the Netherlands, where it already secured itself of a spot on the TOP 10 list of Dutch films of the last 20 years. (It even beat HANNIBAL in its second week of release.)

Enjoy the dancing and the fun Ugly Duck Becomes Beautiful Swan story. Enjoy Verbaan´s clumsiness, enjoy La Schuurman´s beautiful body displayed on a giant screen, enjoy the jokes and, if you have ever been with a bunch of young people on holiday, enjoy all those instantly recognizable moments. I did.

Ok let's start with saying that when a dutch movie is bad, it's REALLY BAD. Rarely something with a little bit of quality comes along(Lek, Karakter) here in holland but not often. Costa! is about 4 girls going to Spain to go on vacation, party, get drunk, get laid (u know the drill). It's also about the world of Clubbers or Proppers. Pro's who're trying to lure the crowd into their club.

I'm not sure how long it took to write the script, but i suspect somewhere between 15 minutes and 20 minutes because you're watching a bunch of random scenes for 90 minutes long. Nothing, and i mean nothing is believable in this movie. It's almost too riduculous for words what happens with the storyline. Suddenly the movie transforms into a sort of karate action thing. With a one-on-one fight with 'the bad guy in black' and cliche car chase scenes trough a watertank-car (can it be more cheesy). Also the words character-development and casting are unfamiliar to the makers.

After having seen "Traffic" 3 days before this, i fell from sheer brilliance, from a piece of art to this. This is film-making at it's saddest. And don't start about low budget. Because even with a low budget you could write a better script. It almost seems that the film-makers were too busy partying themselves to make a decent movie.

Anyway the chicks in the water at the end made it up a little bit, but for the rest of it, don't waste your money on such garbage.

Rough start that truly shows the soap-background of most actors and not much story.

Overall it's not bad, but just very flat and rather superficial; no very obvious plot holes either tho; along with the surprisingly action packed 3rd act altogether a decently put together movie.