De brief voor de koning

The original Tonke Dragt children's book was one of my favorites as a child. Having recently read the book to my own children, I discovered that it hasn't quite stood the test of time: slow, sometimes contrived, with stilted dialogue and sexist tendencies to make Tolkien proud. How fortunate, then, that a movie was made; what an excellent opportunity to reinvent the story while still staying true to the source material, like Peter Jackson did with Lord of the Rings.

No such luck.

Brief voor de Koning as a film is rooted firmly in the Dutch tradition of shameless mediocrity. The screenplay includes most crucial scenes from the book, but presents them in a bloodless, uninspired sequence, completely draining what little tension the original story carried. The acting is community theater level and worse, the entire cast delivering badly written lines with wooden expressions and clumsy body language. Direction, production, and even camera work and lighting were so bad I began to notice them.

Dutch film critics and moviegoers alike have a tendency to embrace Dutch products and grant them an extra star (on a five-star scale) or two for effort and out of misplaced chauvinism. This is the only explanation I can think of for the 5.8 on IMDb. Even the four I gave this atrocity feels too high.

My kids loved it, though.