Ja, ik wil! (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
After just having reviewed Life, a film by the Dutch director Anton Corbijn, we can now present you with a completely Dutch film, be it of a completely different genre. Ja, ik wil! is a romantic comedy with lots of weddings and an eternal search for love, combined with lots of humorous and up tempo scenes, which might make it a good idea for a lazy night in.
Roos (Elise Schaap) is a woman in her thirties, with a good job and a seemingly good relationship. She is already thinking of getting married herself, when her boyfriend Pieter (Jeroen Spitzenberger) decides to dump her. As she really thought he was her knight in shining armor, she absolutely didn’t see it coming, and she’s devastated. At work (she works in a lab as a biologist) she becomes the supervisor of the new intern Daan (Martijn Lakemeier), who will help her with her research on lobsters, but due to the recent misfortunes in her private life, she doesn’t give him the most warm welcome. After a night out with the colleagues they get a bit better acquainted. When she needs a date to go to a friend’s wedding, to show that she has moved on from Pieter, she asks Daan, be it only to keep up appearances. At the wedding she meets Jacob (Thijs Römer), a guy who seems to have it all. She falls head over heels, even though her mother warns her, arguing she doesn’t know him at all yet, and it’s best to be careful before falling in love with him. Nonetheless she keeps seeing him and has a wonderful time, even though Daan, who she was spending a lot of fun moments with, is tossed aside, since she found a man with whom she would actually love to be. Seeing Roos is eager to find to find someone to spend the rest of her life with, it’s possible she rushed into things without knowing if Jacob is mister right for her. Perhaps another suitor is still right around the corner.
The tone is set immediately as in the first scene already, Roos gets dumped by Pieter after a discussion about her always agreeing with everything he says. He blames her for never having an honest opinion. To make it even worse, this happens at a wedding while all her friends are watching. After that, the film is a rollercoaster that takes you from one wedding to the other and shows you Roos who is at a complete loss when it comes to love. She always manages to find a date, but she doesn’t seem to be able to find her true love. Toss in her clumsiness, especially when it comes to parking her light blue car, with lashes on the headlights and all, and you have yourself a nice, though quite typical romantic comedy.
The story moves at quite a fast pace, which is actually a good thing, given the subject is rather cliché. It makes sure the story doesn’t get too dull. Nonetheless it stays quite cliché, and on top of that, it is quite on the long side for a romcom, thus it is still probably a love or hate thing.
Elise Schaap does a very good job as Roos. She is both clumsy and smart, which makes her very loveable. Besides her, it’s merely the men who stand in the spotlight, be it her current or her former crushes. Martijn Lakemeier is fun to watch as the young intern who becomes Roos’ date, while Jeroen Spitzenberger is funny to watch as Pieter, the one who dumped Roos flat out.
As a bonus you can watch a ‘behind the scenes’, which is always nice, but nothing special. Other than that there is nothing extra to enjoy. Extras are never an obligatory thing, but with films like this, it is always nice to have something more. Especially bloopers and deleted scenes would have been fun and more appropriate than a ‘behind the scenes’, which was nonetheless fun enough to watch.
Conclusion
Ja, ik wil! is a typical romantic comedy that, with its fast flow and many things happening all the time, will keep enjoying you, most of the time. If you’re looking for an original story, you might want to look elsewhere, but since you can’t really expect that of any film in this genre, you might as well sit back and enjoy the fun storyline.
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