Abeltje (1998) Reviews

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from this flick but since it was directed by Ben Sombogaart , I was still eager to check it out. On top of that, this movie won the Golden Calf of the best Dutch movie of the year so I thought it should be pretty good. Well, eventually, I was amazed about how underwhelming the whole thing was. Indeed, seriously, this was the best Dutch movie released in 1999?!? Even though I have a weak spot for Dutch movies, it shows that the Dutch movie industry is actually pretty pathetic. On top of that, I'm not a big fan of Dutch children movies in general and this one was just really very average and seriously boring to behold. I don’t know, maybe it was loved because it was an adaptation of a book written by Annie M.G. Schmidt, by far the most heralded Dutch children book writter and pretty much a legend in the Netherlands. Some viewers complained that this movie was actually racist with all its cultural stereotypes but, even though the whole thing was indeed pretty awkward, it still remains a rather harmless familly feature so it shouldn’t be analysed too much. To conclude, I really didn’t like this flick and I don’t think it is worth a look, except if you really love the genre.