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.

"Whenever you feel like critisizing anyone, just remember that all the people in the world haven't had the same advantages that you had". Maybe this Scott Fitzgerald quote is quite familiar to Costa!

The film sets out in one of Spains favourable vacation settings, Salou. Especially for senior high-school sudents this place is recommendable. Youngsters go there to party, get drunk and getting lot's of girls.

Main characters in this feature are the 'proppers' of discotheque Costa. Proppers are people who work for a discotheque and try to get other people coming to their party's. Therefor, there is a lot of competition with other discotheques, such as Empire.

The film starts out in the Netherlands where three girls prepare their vacation to Spain, one of them HAS to bring her little teenage sister(Verbaan). The film guide-lines us through the 'dirty-dancing' journey of Verbaan and one of the proppers(Daan Schuurmans). Despite this, the relationship between Daan Schuurmans and one of his female-colleaques(Katja Schuurman) is also notable.

This romantic new of age DIRTY DANCING takes you through one and a half our of pure entertainment. Don't be prepared for a clever script and dialogue. Just expect a funny slapstick typical dutch movie, to see with your friends...In Salou people forget who they really are, that's what the story is all about...Don't forget that!

This might very well be the worst movie I've seen in my life. Normally I don't watch movies like this, however I was forced to watch this at school. What a torment!

The story is as average and boring as it can be: Boy meets girl at the Spanish coast, boy and girl fall in love, but the love between the two seems impossible and everyone and everything is against their love. At the end of the movie the film becomes some kind of weird kung-fu movie were the guys in white fight the guys in black. Awful!

The action is so bad that it makes you laugh. The dances in the film that I think are supposed to be cool are so simple and laughable that even I can do them! And Georgina Verbaan is possibly the most irritating person i've ever seen on screen.

Johan Nijenhuis is on his way of becoming the Dutch Ed Wood. His movies are so bad that they make you laugh.

Victor Löw however gives a surprising good performance and Daan Schuurmans also acts OK.

So please for your own sake don't watch this movie. However if you like watching soaps this might be very well worth your time.

Yuk!

2/10

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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.

Why are all people who are not a teenager so negative about this movie? This is a funny, soapy romantic comedy which is just fun to watch. I really liked this better than the stupid 'Volle Maan', which was way to serious. Georgina Verbaan plays Janet, a girl who is insecure and a bit dumb, but with a good heart. She goes with her sister and two of her sister's friends on a holiday to Spain. There she meets Rens, a runner from a local dance-club, the Costa!. He asks her if she could dance with them, because there's soon an important MTV-dance-contest which they have to win because of the free publicity. Okey, the acting is not brilliant and the storyline is not too deep, but what's the big deal? It's a movie with all the ingredients of a successful summer movie. You see Costa! at moments you don't want to think about anything, you just want to have a nice time. And Costa! really succeeds in that.