Tricked

What gets left out of the description is the 33 minutes at the beginning of the movie where Verhoeven is fawned over by various people as he explains how the script for the film was constructed. The screenwriter wrote only the first 4 pages. The rest pf the narrative arc was crowd-sourced, and - like anything crowd-sourced - it's profoundly mediocre. Crowds don't make great art. Only gifted individuals do. Lots of effort for not much benefit. So, keep in mind: the fictional movie itself is only about an hour long - and there are no surprises - just Paul Verhoeven congratulating himself on being so hip and smart.

During the birthday party of the wolf 50 year-old entrepreneur Remco (Peter Blok) promoted by his beloved wife and partner Ineke (Ricky Koole), he learns that his former lover Nadja (Sallie Harmsen) is pregnant. On the next morning, he also learns that his two other partners have betrayed him and are trying to sell his company to the Chinese. They blackmail him with Nadja´s baby, promising that she will disappear if he sells the company. Meanwhile his daughter, her best friend and his son discover a secret that will affect Remco´s business.

"Steekspel", a.k.a. "Tricked", is a witty and very funny comedy by Paul Verhoeven. The storyline is simple about a dysfunctional family and with several twists and an excellent open conclusion. The nice cast is another attraction of this underrated film. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Traição" ("Betrayal")

I watched this movie on an online streaming service which is apparently a different experience than watching it on DVD. This version is over 90 minutes long and has what I'm assuming is the DVD "making of" featurette, which is about 45 minutes long, attached to the front of it. While in theory I'm all for DVD extras, I rarely actually enjoy them. But given the unusual circumstances behind this movie, the featurette was actually interesting. Verhoeven started with just 5 pages of script and tried to crowdsource the writing of the rest of it. Naturally, this lead to problems, and his struggles to get the film finished made for an interesting story in itself, and I imagine the details would be informative viewing for movie fans and for anyone who wants to make movies themselves.

And how was the movie itself? Better than it had any right to be, but nothing particularly exceptional. The story involves the birthday celebration of a married businessman and the events triggered when his pregnant ex-lover shows up unexpectedly. The story isn't bad but it never escapes the feeling of being a light-hearted soap opera. The performances are good but the script never gets particularly compelling and the whole thing feels inconsequential. Anyone who didn't know the back story of the movie or who wasn't a fan of the director would probably never bother with it.

Short experimental film where people gave ideas to the scenario. The film bounces joyously into scandals of small sizes and reactions are not quite predictable. Funny but very light.

Maybe sweet is the wrong word to use, especially when it comes to a movie made by Paul Verhoeven. But I really liked this one. It may be predictable (to a point), but it is a fun watch, with some really good moments. It's not PC (expected), but it's also very short, running just under an hour.

Paul wanted to stay active so he made this movie, while waiting for a bigger job to happen. That doesn't mean he just went ahead and made it fast and without planning. There is a making of on the DVD that shows you the preparation he took and how he planned a lot of things. He treated this like a feature length even though it wasn't. It's also "european", so expect nudity and other things in it