Hotel op stelten

An international title for this Flemish spoken film might be "Panic in the Hotel". A literal translation for the title is "hotel on stilts" but that doesn't do the Dutch expression used in the title any good. Anyway, this is the first cinema film based around the characters of the Belgian children's series Samson en Gert in which the guy Gert living with his dog Samson goes to a series of adventures together with some of the other people in the city and it is in fact somewhat better than the average episode of the series.

The film starts when Gert's girlfriend Marlene calls to tell him her hotel is going to be demolished if it isn't repaired within a week. Gert, of course, wants to help out and brings everyone he can to the hotel to help out. Next to this red line of the story there are two crooks that have stolen a diamond some twenty years earlier and have hidden that in the hotel, and that want to get it back out again.

Being a children's film it never gets any more hair raising then doing groceries on an average day but it worked for the kid and thus it worked for me. The kid I took to see this film likes the series it is based on, and absolutely loved this film. No doubt due to the plethora of slapstick moments in it that are also prevalent in the series.

It's clearly no great work in the world of cinema, but for it works wonders for its projected audience - the kids.

8 out of 10 diamonds in the rough

This movie was based on the popular kid show "Samson & Gert", about an unemployed man and his dog living together and having nothing to do all day except ending up in situational comedy. I really loved that show. The premise might have been somewhat thin, but the funny stories and the somewhat surreal acting made it a true classic. I was always under the impression that a movie about this show could only be awesome, but sadly I was proved wrong by this failure. The way I see it, they made two mistakes: the first one is that they spent too much money. Perhaps that doesn't make any sense, but this movie really looks way too expensive. I'm used to the sets trembling and shaking whenever someone opens a door, I'm used to Samson having the motor skills of Stephen Hawking. Now all of a sudden there's action happening all over the place (what's with all the useless camera trickery?) and Samson walking around like he's rabid or something. They also provided Alberto with a fatsuit this time around, sadly it's the most disgusting fatsuit ever captured on celluloid. Jesus, just use pillows. The second reason this movie isn't very good is because they waited too long to make it. If you can't get the original voice actor to play Samson, don't make the movie. Instead they just opted for a distractingly horrible replacement that just makes you want to yell "you're not Samson!" at the screen for minutes straight. That could get you awkward stares in the theatre though. Another bothering aspect about this movie are the completely unfunny villains. The writers of "Samson & Gert" have a talent for writing amusing side characters, I guess they just decided not to use it for the occasion. For shame. It's not all bad though, I like how they handled some elements of the show, like the use of Marlene and the clever takes on the catchphrases. The recurring characters from the show are also still extremely likable. But that just doesn't really manage to save the movie, sadly.