Review: Waterboys (2016)

Director: Robert Jan Westdijk | 93 minutes | comedy, drama, family, music | Actors: Leopold Witte, Tim Linde, Helen Belbin, Julie McLellan, Miles Jupp, Tom Mannion

Sometimes very occasionally, a movie is made because the filmmaker is a filmmaker, and nothing more than that. If the undersigned only made beautiful things for writing, his daughter would not have obtained her swimming diploma so quickly. That’s how it is.
To generalize in Trump’s times, Dutch films are made very easy. Beforehand, ‘Waterboys’ gives the impression that it is a cathartic, musical road trip to Scotland by father and son, but is in fact a clichéd touristy idea of ​​the director to drape a lot of slack bitch around his favorite band, of two enlarged types.

Nonsense about women, who in the case of father Victor (Leopold Witte) are festive pastimes, or “akela” – like his ex, also mother of son Zack (Tim Linde). Victor meddles extensively in the love life of this weeping willow of the timid species. Zack’s beautiful girlfriend is on a date, and the road trip to Scotland, intended to promote a book by writer Victor, is interrupted almost every moment by text messages from the ex-couple; apps that pop into the screen, after which father and son have a discussion about the answer. “Player” Victor knows what to do with the females, although there is of course a moment of crying about his own single existence, because “the females” also watch the cinema themselves and real men just cry.

You might think a bad review, but we like to be positively surprised by film and not the other way around. The band “The Waterboys” is responsible for the soundtrack and performed in concert hall Paradiso for the film recordings. Fun. While the choice of music and performance are impeccable, the concert recorded in Amsterdam must take place in Edinburgh for the viewer. And the concert audience seems to consist of extras rather than true enthusiasts. At the end of “Waterboys” (spoiler), both gentlemen had a girl – a hotel receptionist and an akela from the publishing house. The need for this film project is strongly doubted by this gentleman – and probably also by the one above.