Dutch directors Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kuil are well-known for their not so subtle humour. Their creations like New Kidz and Bro’s Before Ho’s are filled with crude jokes, but which I did manage to appreciate. I even seen their previous movie several times. As a movie blogger you’d expect I’d be up to date on what movies will be released, but honestly it is something I never look into. So it was a surprise when I saw this title mentioned as playing in the cinema. The title alone was already enough to get me interested and when I saw who directed this I just had to see it. I was ready for it.
Ron Goossens (Tim Haars) regularly performs dangerous stunts and the movie opens with him planning to jump a bridge which is slowly opening. This stunt doesn’t exactly go as planned, partly because he is extremely drunk, but when the video of his failed attempt appears on YouTube it goes viral and everyone wants to know more about him. He is contacted by Berrie (Michiel Romeyn), who wants to manage him and get him work in big movies. Ron doesn’t feel like doing that, but when his wife wants to leave him and tells him he can only stay with her if she manages to have sex with famous actress Bo Maerten. Ron really doesn’t know much about the job of a stuntman (he just does everything without planning) and decides to do it.
Even though the jokes in this film are similar to previous van Haars and van der Kuil movies, it simply didn’t manage to make me laugh. Jokes about shocking real life events being turned into movies and where Ron is the stuntguy (for example the attack on the royal family or the case of child abuser) is something which you can pull off, but they didn’t connect with me. The tone of the movie is very different. Ron is a tragical character with a drinking problem who’s obsessed by Bo Maerten and who starts acting like a stalker, even though he doesn’t mean to. The movie has a lot of cameos (both by directors and famous Dutch actors) and shines a light on the Dutch movie scene, but as this is a comedy it was surprising to hear so little laughs in the theater I was in. The concept of “low budget stuntman” isn’t explored enough and most of the time comes down to him not sticking a landing. I had hoped on some more variation. Still this might be a movie some will like, but unfortunately it didn’t work for me.
