Schatjes!

Schatjes is a good example of the poor level of the Dutch cinema in the 80's. The acting is very weak, there's almost no story and the script is missing every form of reality. There is a lot of sick slapstick into it which will make no one laughing. It's hard to understand that this film makes one million Dutch people go to the cinema while a lot of good movies from my country are ignored by the audience. If you are still going to watch the movie be prepared for the ridiculous ending.

I wasn't expecting the ending this movie have but its suit the title. Darling with the exclamation mark is the best creative part of this movie. This film story follow a family's inner relationship that rebuke today's parents and their children bonding from the bottom.

The interesting part is how the story escalate comedy to horror(no its not the genre).

Its a hidden gem of European movie for sure. And must watch for new gen-z peopleso they can learn how to defend themselves(just kidding). But yes the lesson we should learn from this movie. And don't forget this is the most successful Dutch movie at the time.

This movie is not like other comedies, it's extremely violent, offensive and weird at times, the result is an odd comedy that has its few moments.

The movie starts of quite well and has a good concept but later on the movie suddenly takes a turn and becomes even more odder and unlikely than the first halve, with the weird and sudden musical number that doesn't fit into the movie at all as the ultra lowest point of the movie. I lost all my respect and interest after that moment.

But sure the movie has its moments. There are some comical and funny moments and Rijk de Gooyer plays an enjoyable character but all of that is simply not enough to save this movie.

Not worth seeing.

4/10

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This Dutch film was a big commercial and critical hit when it appeared on Dutch screens in 1984. Which is really odd, considering that it's probably impossible to get a sort of film like this made these days anywhere. This movie is clearly influenced by the struggles that parents and children endure with each other. Everyone who is going through or has gone through puberty or is a parent of a child going through puberty might recognize the basis of the story. But the brilliance of Van Hemert is that he has taken this outline based on reality and has blown it out of proportion, which makes the movie a truly entertaining and demented experience.

The family Gisberts live in a very affluent villa. Father John Gisberts works in a nearby army base, where he does not do any much except for flying around in a helicopter, thereby checking out his family the whole time. His family is a real wild bunch. There's the mother Danny, who has fooled around with her tennis teacher Dennis, who is actually in love with the daughter of the family, Madelon. She harbors the same feelings for Dennis, although Danny does everything to stop them. The eldest son Thijs, in the meanwhile, is going through a heavy puberty and likes to cross on his motor cycle through the family garden, thereby destroying it. And then there are the two youngest sons Jan-Julius and Valentijn, who are clearly following the examples of their elder siblings and are up to no good. The children are wholly neglected by their parents, and if they are not neglected then they are condescended to or shouted at. John and Danny are clearly in an unhappy marriage and were not ever meant to have children. The only thing they seem to care about is their social status, with John clearly up for a promotion at his army base. The children are fed up with their parents' neglect and in the beginning are trying to get their attention at whatever means necessary, even if that means converting the alarm clock next to their parents'bed into... a ticking bomb! Of course, this doesn't work. And soon the fights descend into an all-out war between the two generations of the Gisberts family with a highlight being the children gassing their parents to a long sleep, evicting their parents out of the house and the parents trying to regain their house with the help of John's friends of the army base in one of the best action scenes ever done in Dutch cinema.

Schatjes starts blackly comic and veers into action-thriller territory and finally ends up with a horror sequence, homaging Kubrick's The Shining. It also has a bizarre musical interlude, in which tennis teacher Dennis tries get back with Madelon by singing a song; a scene that clearly tries to send up genre conventions, but completely fails. Reasons for inclusion of this scene might be director Ruud van Hemert and his former experience with the then-experimental Dutch television network VPRO. But the rest of the movie is assuredly directed and written by Van Hemert. The actors are also quite up to the task. As the parents Peter Faber (John) and Geert de Jong (Danny) descend comically and believably (albeit in a grotesque kind of way) from egotistical nitwits to maniacal bastards. The children start out believably as irritating little sh*ts, but their characters turn out to be easy to root for and are most of the time, bizarrely enough, affecting. Clearly Van Hemert was wanting the public to root for the children, which makes the movie quite controversial as usually the parents' position is something that can't be questioned in a patriarchal world, like the one we live in. but Van Hemert had the guts to stick the finger to conservative thinking, which makes Schatjes! a guilty pleasure.

Ok , It's not a work of art and sure , the Dutch movie-industry has a lot more to offer than this , but we are talking about the same year that 'Police Academy' was released in the theaters.

'Schatjes' and the sequel 'Mama is boos' was just one of those movies that was fun to watch, especially as a Belgian Dutch-speaking viewer. And when it comes to slapstick , I bow for the folks from the Low-lands. All WE had so far was 'Gaston en Leo' and 'Urbanus' (no offence to his one-man show talent of course).

I give it a 6. My highest score in this genre.