Hotel on stilts-Samson and Gert: Hotel on stilts (2008)

Directed by: Bart van Leemputten | 67 minutes | family | Actors: Gert Verhulst, Peter Thyssen, Koen Crucke, Walter de Donder, Walter van de Velde, Walter Baele, Patrick Onzia, Werner De Smedt, Maarten Bosmans, Geert Hoste

Following in the footsteps of other TV heroes, Belgian childhood friends Samson and Gert experience their first adventure on the silver screen. You could therefore best compare this film with ‘Ernst and Bobbie and the Crafty Onix’, this popular duo also first made its way to the cinema in 2007, after years of amassing fans with their appearance on TV. Although there is a Dutch production team behind “Ernst, Bobbie en de rest”, “Samson en Gert” is made by the Flemish multi-million dollar company Studio 100. It is striking that Samson and his owner Gert can only be seen in a cinema film in 2008; colleagues such as K3, Piet Piraat and Kabouter Plop, also from Studio 100, can almost be called cinema film veterans.

In ‘Hotel op Stelten’ the emphasis is mainly on the crooks, who stole a red diamond twenty years ago. While little Gert is playing football with Marlèneke, they look in the basement of the hotel of Marlèneke’s grandfather for a hiding place for the jewel, which will of course make them millions richer. Because Gert kicks the ball through the basement window, they see it as a perfect hiding place. However, the crooks are caught, the ball is forgotten and the film continues twenty years later. Marlèneke enlists the help of Samson and Gert because her grandfather’s hotel will be demolished if it is not refurbished within a week. Meanwhile, it turns out that the two crooks have escaped and the first thing they want to do is retrieve their diamond. It’s a shame that the story no longer focuses on refurbishing the hotel. The crooks are not funny at all, especially when one dresses up in an Elvis costume and the other continues in a bad disguise as a rockabilly girl. They continue to walk around in these costumes for the rest of the film and it only produces sparingly comic situations. The first time the dumbest crook slips, gets bumped by the other crook and then realizes his voice isn’t high enough to pass as a woman and then slips again in a feminine way, this is still funny, But after three or four times it gets boring. Also the character of Alberto, who, just like in the series, can’t exercise his craft because he can’t get anyone to want to be cut by him, is quite irritating. Every character, even the two child heroes Samson and Gert, have something to annoy you. Gert’s blind idolatry for Marlèneke (who is also not fully featured in this film) is unimaginable, for example, Samson’s corruption of words also arouses annoyance. The only bursts of laughter in the audience come when the crooks are taken down.

The title ‘Hotel on stilts’ and the fact that the hotel in question needs to be refurbished suggests absurd situations in which Samson, Gert and the rest encounter problems in restoring the dilapidated building, but this is hardly discussed. Instead, it focuses on the experiences of the two crooks, and the effort they make to get into the basement to get the ball. That is actually the biggest flaw in the film, because they are not pleasant characters to watch and young children will even find them terrifying. Something that could have brought some air to the story would have been the use of songs, but unfortunately this has been abandoned. K3, Kabouter Plop, Piet Piraat and Ernst and Bobbie will have understood that better.

‘Samson and Gert: Hotel on stilts’ probably won’t bring in new fans, but it will probably score high with fans of the series. However, they too will have to get used to Samson’s other voice. Since the summer of 2005, the voice of the bobtail has been voiced by Peter Thyssen instead of Danny Verbiest, who has taken on this role for no less than sixteen years.