Team Spirit

This Belgian movie about a group of friends who play soccer together during the weekend,is constructed into a nice little movie.Considering the low budget this film was made with,it looks rather good,certainly when you know that lots of wellknown actors in Belgium are playing in it.I'd liked it.No more,no less.Jan Verheyen did it one more time again.All his films were at least worth looking at it.

I have seen the movie 2 times, and I like this style of movie very well. It's with a lot of humor. A little bit a family movie. The actors are in Belgium all famous and they do it all well in this movie. For those who likes that movie, there is also a second movie of it. Team spirit II (2003). Also a movie of director "Jan Verheyen". That guy has lot of Belgium movies. And the movies of jan are always great. I hope you watch the movie.

This (Belgian) film is based on the Dutch film ALL STARS, about a bunch of lifelong friends, who have been playing soccer together since they were kids. Each of them has his story to tell and some of them have made more out of life than the others. I wished there had been more of a story to it, but it's all presented in a rather sketchy kind of way. Very often, director Jan Verheyen "uses" the characters to set up for a funny scene. In this way, the characters never seem to transcend the caricatures they are. The aim was definitely to make people laugh and they succeeded in doing that, but it also makes the few "emotional" scenes look rather unreal.(the flashback scenes of the players as young boys are for example totally useless) Sometimes you don't really know whether to laugh or cry at the scene. The acting however was very good(especially by the leads Axel Daeseleire and Tom van Landuyt, some of the best younger actors in Belgium)and the many cameos were funny too. But I guess you have to be Belgian to really appreciate all of it. The film is so typical Belgian(or should I say Flemish?)that I don't think it will appeal to many foreign viewers.(but perhaps that's not the purpose of the film) A thing I also found rather noticeable about the film was the sound-track, which is filled with different sorts of Belgian bands. It shows that Belgium too has all sorts of good music and that it's not a coincidence that these bands are frequently used for Hollywood(and other foreign) sound-tracks.

All in all, an often pleasing film, just don't look for a deeper sense in it. 6/10

Team Spirit is maybe made by the best intentions, but it misses the warmth of "All Stars" (1997) by Jean van de Velde. Most scenes are identic, just not that funny and not that well done. The actors repeat the same lines as in "All Stars" but without much feeling.

A movie about an amateur soccer team, why would I ever want to see that? Even though about 95% of the male population loves to watch the game weekend after weekend, I'm not interested in it at all. And I've never been interested in it. That's also why I was one of the few boys who wasn't in a soccer team at the age of six. Most fathers push their sons to become the next Ronaldo, Pele or Raul, hoping that they will make their own 'dream career' come true, but I didn't care about that at all (neither did my father by the way). Still, I gave this movie a try, but only because this was a Belgian movie. In my opinion there aren't enough movies made over here (especially not when you see how they do it in other European countries), and I feel like we should support every little effort that has been made to do something about that problem.

"Team Spirit" tells the story of an amateur soccer team. The players know each other since childhood and have been friends ever since, although they don't really have anything else in common except for their interest in soccer. But now that they are about to play their 500th match, they don't know if they still want to continue with the team. They are all thinking about starting a family or already have one, they've got a job that takes a lot of their time,... And if that isn't all enough, they all have their own private problems which also affects their way (or sometimes the lack ) of thinking in a very drastic way.

I know that this movie has been shot with a very small budget and that's why I will not say that this is an awful movie. It's far from a masterpiece, but Jan Verheyen probably got the best out of it and made it a watchable movie. Still, there were a couple of things that annoyed me enough to notice them and to write them down in this review. One of those things is the appearance of all those so-called famous people who all had to make a guest appearance in this movie (I'm pretty sure that outside Flanders, no-one has ever heard of them, but they were probably put in it to draw a larger crowd). Was that really necessary? Ilse De Meulemeester was still OK, but all the others should have stayed out of it. There are enough actresses who could have played those roles and probably even better than what we got to see now. Another thing that bothered me was the obvious sponsoring: when they were drinking a beer the brand was quite obvious, the sponsors on the shirt weren't a coincidence either,... Those are cheap tricks that never should be used in a movie, not even when it hasn't got a big budget.

Still, not everything about this movie was bad. The acting by the good and rather famous actors was more than OK. Tom Van Landuyt, Michael Pas, Axel Daeseleire,... were all very enjoyable, although it was Dimitri Leue who really was the best in my opinion. But they just weren't able to save this entire movie. The story was OK, although the 'emotional' scenes (the old images of the young boys, the death of Franky's dad,...) looked rather cheap and unbelievable, making this a movie that is worth a watch, but nothing more than that.

There is absolutely nothing exceptional or great about this movie and that's a shame. It just couldn't live up to the hype that was created around it. Jan Verheyen always complains that he doesn't get enough money to make a great film. Possible, but in my opinion he just isn't the greatest director we have. Even when he has the budget, I don't think he will ever be able to make a really exceptional movie. I give this movie a rating between 6/10 and 6.5/10.