Billy (2018)

Directed by: Theo Maassen | 90 minutes | comedy | Actors: Bruno Vanden Broecke, Ruben van der Meer, Ellen Parren, Christine de Boer, Jan-Paul Buijs

A ventriloquist dummy with Gilles de la Tourette, can you imagine? The undersigned does, because he has just seen ‘Billy’, the directorial debut of comedian Theo Maassen. It’s an uncomfortable experience. Billy is the ventriloquist doll of Gerard (Bruno Vanden Broecke). The literally inseparable duo is not unsuccessful in the theaters, but ventriloquist Gerard privately not so fortunate. He hasn’t had a wife in ten years. The new neighbor Merel (Christine de Boer) wants Gerard all too much, but alter ego Billy calls her an ‘sour box’ in which she herself is present. There’s a reason for that. The sexy Belinda (Ellen Parren) is crazy about Billy and likes to be satisfied by him orally; Belinda sees the drooling Gerard only as a chaperone.

Of course you can see from miles away that Gerard and neighbor Merel … Well, yes. Still, it’s fun to play with speaker and pop – one a good-hearted dork, the other a manipulative bastard. It doesn’t work at all, because viewers and opponents know all too well that Billy’s swearing comes from Gerard’s brain, but it is nice and disruptive. A bit at youth film level, that is, because for adults it rains a lot and for a rom-com it grinds too much. De Boer (Yentl and De Boer) is a pleasant surprise and a sympathetic appearance, but what Merel sees in Gerard only the screenwriter knows, and he has forgotten to write it down.

Vanden Broecke is also not entirely convincing in a supporting role. And the eternal Ruben van der Meer – as Gerard’s manager, only makes you think: ‘not for a while’. The ideas are halfway through and the gimmick is worked out; then Maassen, who still has to grow considerably in structure and dosage, takes a different, navel-gazing tack: the cabaret artist with an identity crisis. Gerard says goodbye to Billy and becomes a solo artist, with songs like ‘The time of masturbating is over’. However, the theater success is also over. Logical, because Gerard also said goodbye to Billy privately in order to get Merel. But to reach that after fifty minutes and then muddle through? A case of premature ejaculation.