Samba-boy

Title already is kind of self-explanatory, but Izzy, the granddaughter of Hawthorne is a self-righteous piece of work, her friend 'Quitter' (whose real name I don't care to learn) is a stupid arrogant jerk and 'Parole' (Once again, a name who I don't care enough about to actually look up) is a one-dimensional cheap shot for cheap laughs. Well, actually, all three of them are. The entire 'junior squad' sucks and where this movie trope 'Worst team you can have, underdogs saving the world' normally is a 'can't fail', it fails miserably in my eyes. The scenery is nice though, but the pacing is godawful, and it's storyline just is all over the place.

Ugh.

2021 was a year where, coincidentally, not just one but two documentaries were made about the Dutch phenomenon from the 90's, Jomanda. One was made by Ewout Genemans for RTL/Videoland, and this one was produced for Discovery Plus.

One thing I do like about this series in particular, is the addition of Tineke de Nooij and her journey to Canada to find and visit Joke Damman (Jomanda). She makes the story complete, as her work with Jomanda in the past, as well as her still strong (but in no way forcing) belief in Jomanda, her soothing and warm personality gives the documentary series a nice feeling of urgency, and also makes the story come full circle. I'd like to compliment the research done on both the amount of people interviewed (those who still support Jomanda after all these years and those opposed to her), as well as the used footage (newsreports, appearances in programs from that era), coming from both public network-sources as from the commercial networks. However, a side note has to be made, it does kinda strike me the wrong way that some footage clearly and bluntly was taken from YouTube, some videos even showing blurred-out watermarks.

Some small editing mistakes were made (some archival footage in a wrong aspect ratio, episode 4 starts with an interview that we already saw at the end of episode 3), and the long intro to the series gets a bit repetitive after seeing it all 4 episodes, but all in all I have no big things to complain.

I can only imagine what a challenge it must have been for the production crew, to correctly place the case surrounding the death of comedian and actress Sylvia Millecam (and what Jomanda had to do with it) in the right spot in this documentary. Sylvia was an amazing comedian, I'd even argue she'd deserve her own documentary on her life and her greatest achievements. That's why it's a challenge to have all those interviews with people that were close to her placed in a right pacing, without losing the sight on the bigger picture.

The amount of interviews with people that, aside from Tineke, still believe in the powers of Jomanda, could be argued as 'countering' for those people who don't believe or never did. Maybe the documentary painted a too bright and too positive view of Jomanda in those first episodes, only to have that view you could get of her crumbled in the later episodes. It's a bit too much on the nose, you know?

I'm not gonna lie, the finale of the documentary was a bit of a letdown, but they managed to roll with every chance they got (no matter how small those are), which gave some sort of closure... It was, however, in no way an ideal situation. And I genuinely felt bad for Tineke.

Sometimes, there are documentaries that just get about everything right. The research on this one is so well done and the situations that are talked about in the documentary are happening as we watch it, so much that you can't deny there is something fishy going on. I loved watching the 'Joy of Painting with Bob Ross'-shows as much as anyone else, but I never fully understood the current operations by 'Bob Ross Inc', and all the irrelevant or subpar 'crap' they are selling nowadays with the Bob Ross-name slapped on it. Watch this documentary and find out how one couple called the Kowalski's succeeded in actually robbing a man's name while on his deathbed. It's sad, really. They did Steve dirty.