After hearing Tonke Dragt's "brief voor de koning" was about to be filmed I really was looking forward to it. "Kruistocht in spuikerbroek" showed a dutch filmmaker can do really well. So when I saw the trailer and read about it, I hasted myself towards the cinema, assuming this would be a great two hours movie.
In the beginning all was fine, nice locations, beautiful costumes, all looked like it could be part of the book. But then, after ten minutes or so, the audio became very irritating with horrible lip syncing. It looked like afterwards in the audio recording studio the director forgot to show the movie and actors had to read their lines straight from paper
at once, without retries or any rehearsal. And why didn't any one bother to think about distance?? On film the actors turn their head, walk away, stand one meter from the camera or ten, but the volume is always the same.
I guess I could get used to this, wasn't it for the horrible stage acting pronunciation. I mean, if an actor is on stage he should speak as clear as possible. But hey, this is cinema, the audio comes from several speakers, speak naturally, do not overdo it! Then there's the acting, how many shots did it take to make this movie, only one? Was half of all shooting days wasted on rehearsals? With every single scene I was under the impression the director shouted "Great, well done! Next one!" You can sometimes even see main characters without lines looking around like "what am I doing here, or hey, what kind of lens is that cameraman using?" And then the locations, though well chosen, did anyone really bother to recheck them before filming?? Why are electricity cables running on walls in a medieval setting? And was it so hard to cover up twenty century electricity boxes?? After this, I think it was twenty minutes into the movie, everything became very annoying. The night shots taken at day time with dark filters, but with the sunny shadows so clearly visible. The rare good acting of even fewer actors became bad, rapped by bad voice recording.
And then, halfway through the movie I became angry, very angry, this was not a movie made to do just to the book or to entertain the audience. It was made so uninspired famous actors had a job and a film crew without any talent could make a full movie.
Was it all bad then? No, the choice of many locations was great, even some actors really tried hard and costume design was great, but what remained was this horrible feeling I completely wasted my time, money and even worse, my good mood. So I left the cinema with an very angry feeling. This movie was an insult, a blasphemy of what good cinema is all about. Besides very few efforts it all looked like the makers wanted to make a very, very quick buck.
But hey, this is my opinion. I still would say, go see for yourself. But please, rent it, or much better, try to lend it from friends or family or any one who was drunk enough to buy this one, because in all honesty, the idea the creators of this flick receive any more money makes me sick: they should be in the TV business, not the film industry.
