Out and about with Dirk Scheele (2018)

Directed by: Bert Penraat | 66 minutes | family | With: Dirk Scheele, Anky van Grunsven, Mylène, Peter Lusse, Rosanne, Joes Boonen

Anyone who has children between the ages of two and about eight cannot ignore him: ‘child pop star’ Dirk Scheele. For 25 years he has been making cheerful children’s songs with which he tours theaters, festivals and pop venues in the Netherlands and Belgium. Scheele started out as a music therapist for children with disabilities. When his songs – with themes that are very recognizable to children such as animals, playing and brushing teeth – also appealed to others, he switched to the theater. The nice thing about his songs is not only their simplicity, but also the fact that he introduces the children to various music styles, such as rock, dance, classical and world music. In a playful way he teaches children the love for music. He usually accompanies himself with guitar, but also dares to experiment with alternative musical instruments such as key rings, tools and toys. In this way, each song becomes a mini-theatre performance. Scheele has released a series of CDs and DVDs, books have been published and his songs have since been translated into German and English. In addition, he can be seen daily on children’s television channel Nick Jr. with his own program and he has a YouTube channel with an average of 1.5 million views per month and over 30,000 subscribers.

His young fans can now also see Dirk Scheele in the cinema, because a real film has been released in which the child pop star experiences a number of new adventures. The film has been given the title ‘On the road with Dirk Scheele’ (2018) and consists of six short, musical stories in which Dirk experiences all kinds of things. He meets a real king (Scheele himself in a double role) and queen (Joes Boonen), he sings about all the colors in the Keukenhof (together with ‘metal girls’ Manou Maarhuis and Arianne van der Steege), he tells a greengrocer with his ‘Broccolirock’, he goes in the jungle in search of his friend Japie the apie, he goes horseback riding for the very first time and on joke day he plays silly tricks with the twins Mylène & Rosanne, who are known from the Junior Song Contest. Brand new songs are interspersed with old familiar tunes and in addition to the aforementioned people we also see actor Peter Lusse and dressage queen Anky van Grunsven in cameos. The puppetry in the jungle is provided by Jogchem Jalink, who is known from ‘Sesame Street’, among others, and the recordings took place at a number of appealing and interesting locations, namely Soestdijk Palace, Keukenhof, Burger’s Zoo, Anky van Grunsven’s education center and the Pathé. Amersfoort cinema.

The acting is, to put it mildly, not the strongest point of ‘On the road with Dirk Scheele’, but the young target group doesn’t care about that. Fortunately, the songs are very fun and catchy. It is smart of Scheele to not only incorporate new musical material in the film; for small children the power of repetition is very important and they really like that they already know the songs. The themes are kept pleasantly accessible and the individual adventures do not last too long (the total running time of the film is 66 minutes; with an intro and interludes by Dirk who is watching his own film in the cinema). They are bite-sized chunks for the average four-year-old. Dirk Scheele turns everything into a musical party. Therefore, pass on the amateur acting and let your child enjoy the sympathetic and catchy songs!