Mees Kees op de Planken (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
It doesn’t always have to be shooting maniacs or creepy, living dolls that feature in a movie. In Mees Kees op de Planken, we see how a group of kids try to make a heartwarming story to tell the whole family. Although it’s naturally not the most spectacular movie of all time, still, what they tried to do with the movie, succeeded for the most part. Here’s why.
In Mees Kees op de Planken, we meet Mees Kees (Willem Voogd), a young teacher in the making who’s very loved by his students. Unfortunately, Mees Kees is only a temporary substitute for the class as the real teacher is momentarily at home, caring for her newborn child. Everything in the class is going as it should until head master Dreus (Sanne Wallis de Vries) announces that the class is tasked to make a fabulous play about a rather boring and uninteresting medieval story. As Mees sees how the kids are totally uninterested in the play, he tries to come up with an alternative. Let’s make something completely different, he thinks, and so his will be done. Instead of doing the actual play, the whole class creates something different, something a lot more creative and fun to perform. As Dreus is pretty old-fashioned, it’s of the upmost importance that she doesn’t find out about the newly created show. So far so good you might say. Alas, when the real teacher comes back from maternity leave, the fun soon ends. Mees Kees is transferred to the infant’s class and his former class is pretty devastated as they won’t have Mees as a teacher anymore. One of the students, Tobias (Felix Osinga) even purposely fails a very important test because he wants to stay with the cool, young substitute teacher. The question remains: will everything come together in the end?
Story wise, the plot is pretty simple (which can be expected of a children’s movie) but still, there’s a lot going on all at once. We’ve got the play the children need to practice for; we’ve got Tobias who clings onto the idea of staying with Mees Kees and so much more. It’s pretty astonishing how they put so much different aspects of the story in only 75 minutes. As said before though, the plot is not particularly special or original but it’s certainly good enough for the kids to enjoy themselves. It’s not too childish so even you, as a parent, can watch this movie with the whole family without falling asleep at the lack of complexity.
The pacing in the movie is a rather slow one at first, which might make you wonder if this is the best you’ll get throughout the whole thing, but steadily, the movie shifts into a gear higher later on. Although Mees Kees is meant to be a light experience, there’re still some more emotional scenes that occasionally pop up and this truly adds to the overall quality.
For a cast which pretty much consists of children (with a few exceptions of course), it must be said: they didn’t do a bad job. Of course, you can’t really compare the performances of kids to those of Hollywood stars so if you watch Mees Kees op de Planken, be sure to keep that in mind. In this movie though, the children really tried to stay true to their characters and although not everyone was as good as for example, Felix Osinga (Tobias), it wasn’t dreadful to experience. Felix did a very good job at playing his role as the troubled teenager and it’s mostly because of him that you might feel a bit sad throughout the movie (in a good way of course). Willem Voogd who plays the leading role of Mees Kees, is also a fine actor and clearly has more experience in the acting department. The same can be sad about Sanne Wallis de Vries who previously acted in the movies ‘Vet Hard’ and ‘Soof’. Overall, the acting is certainly far from perfect, but for this kind of movie, it’s pretty alright.
We’ve been getting quite a few movies without any extra features recently and unfortunately, Mees Kees op de Planken isn’t any different. No extras are included on the disc.
Conclusion
Mees Kees op de Planken is certainly a pretty straightforward and simple movie but one that kids might actually like. The plot has a lot of different things going on which keeps the movie from getting dull after a while and the acting, although not everyone is on the same level, is decent enough so you won’t get annoyed over it. Watching this as an adult might not be the way to go but if you’ve got some kids of your own, then Mees Kees op de Planken is certainly a fun way to spend a rainy Sunday.
Mees Kees op de Planken (Blu-ray) - Movie Review,
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