Sadly, the only full-length animation feature ever to emerge out of the Netherlands has a predictable story development and substandard animation that doesn't live up to contemporary standards, let alone today's standards. To put it mildly: the film is a grossly infantile simplification of Marten Toonder's immortal comic strip novel, which is full of subtle humor, to be appreciated at an up-grown level, with characters like caricatures of class society: the ruling classes (the marquis, sir Bommel himself, the mayor), their henchman (police commissioner Bulle Bas, the middle classes (the shopkeeper, the civil servant)and the everyday folk (mainly commoner Wammes Waggel, the childish goose). Now in the film, all this is spoiled by playing down the critical messages , aggravated by stupid animation: everything moves at the wrong time, expressions changing rapidly, lips not keeping up with speech etc. The redeeming factor is the voice acting, which is superb in almost every single case. The shopkeeper Grootgrut outdoes them all, except the marquis, who is played by Ger Smit, best remembered for a series of classic voices for animated TV-series De Fabeltjeskrant. Grootgrut is played by Paul Haenen, who is best known as Bert of Ernie of Sesame Street. The few songs are highly superfluous. Continuity: the eyes of miss Doddel change for white to yellow in almost every cut. Now for some faulty story telling: at the point at which Bommel and his dragon are arrested, the film jumps to a news report from which we learn they are at large. How's that? And why is the dragon prone to stealing? Is also not explained. All in all, the beast is utterly unconvincing. As is the film as a whole. Alas.
Review of Als je begrijpt wat ik bedoel
