Afblijven (2006) User Reviews

Poorly directed

[keesvaneshk · 5/10 · 2 May 2010]

Poorly directed film. There's never any real drama. Everything feels stiff and scripted.

Example: when Melissa arrives in an ambulance at the hospital, the nurse tells Jordi he can't join the hospital crew in the elevator. Dead words. Jordi should have been trying hard to get into the elevator with the medical staff. After all he's very concerned about Melissa!

Another example: when Melissa's mother blames her husband for his daughter's disappearance, he calmly replies "oh, so all my fault". Any father would have exploded at such an accusation coming from his wife!

I'm sure a better director would have been able to get better performances from these promising actors.

Lovely film which shows we've got talents in our country

[sterrekooi · 7/10 · 2 July 2007]

I saw this film for the first time in October 2006. The whole Dutch film business was talking about it: it was the first book of Carry Slee, a very popular Dutch writer who writes mostly for teenagers, of which was been made a film. Shootingstar, the production company of "Afblijven!" had organized a big casting day in March 2006. This is because they wanted to look for new talent in our country and give a chance to children who wanted to be in a movie and were not member of a casting agency. After three rounds, Sem Veeger, at that time 14 years old, was chosen to play Melissa, the girl which it is all about in the story. Apart from a Youth Theathre Education, Sem had never done anything with acting in a movie before, so it was kind of special that they picked her out of eight hundred other children. Sem has talent. She's got an enormous amount of power on screen, she really sort of "sucks you to her face": something in this girl makes you wanting to look at her. She's also pretty and has a nice voice. But there were parts she didn't do well, and it has been shown more than once that there are still a lot of things to learn for her. But she's got time of course! I think they picked the right one. Sem is a nice, intelligent girl who was ABLE to do this. She had fun on set and she grew more and more sure about herself. Did you know that she broke her calf muscle and had to do a dancing scene? Brave girl :). Matthijs van de Sande Bakhuyzen is one of the most talented people in this film. He is the son of the director Willem van de Sande Bakhuyzen who died last year. Afterall, this film is very nice. I already saw it six times. Sem is some sort of an example to me, because she's my age and I also want to be an actress. This film's got a lot of weird texts, that is not the most strong point of it. The acting is not always good, but the story is really nice.

worst dutch movie ever

[themicktrix · 3/10 · 4 March 2007]

This movie sucked so much! the plot is predictable unrealistic and so bad. the directing is one big cliché! Brainpower plays some kind of goodie2shoes. and the one liners of the actors are to be ashamed about like the comment: nou dat wordt dus een 1 it's just to bad and its so stupid that the girl wakes up when she smells the food. And the burgling scene is stupid. how does he open the door? i just think its to much problems to be just a bit realistic the movie does bad to the novels although the novels are quite unrealistic to they do give some kind of inside to the possible troubles of a teenager. i think this is the worst Dutch movie ever.

The dutch after-school special on Ecstacy- inaccurate, boring, and untalented.

[dilbertsuperman · 3/10 · 18 February 2007]

This is a film that is basically an after-school special television quality flick supposed to show us the horrors of Ecstasy but it lacks the balls to show anything real and the entire thing is just a lack of plot, talent and accuracy. The whole thing feels wrong- as if the people writing the script and directing the scenes have no clue about the subject matter or don't have the balls to present it in a realistic format.

The dancing is pretty sad for the most part- the plot is about a young hip hop dancer who aspires for greatness, only to meet a good looking dancer with lots of Ecstasy. After that happens we get a lot of standard issue home drama scenes- the clueless concerned parents, the rebellious addict teen, etc.. this is all cookie cutter suburban viewpoint garbage- it is poorly acted, lacks any real detail or realism to the subject matter and all in all is a complete and utter waste of time. Go see "Fucking Amal" instead.

Wow, Just. Incredible.

[jamirosmajic · 9 May 2014]

This is a true Dutch Hallmark and shows us that this small country can deliver a very intelligent and yet touching film. The actors display an outstanding performance, even though the majority of the cast consists of young aspiring actors. No but seriously, this is so bad that it's brilliant. I have great respect for Carry Slee, who even though she can't write, made so much money of utter bullshit. It's amazing. Even for a children story/film this is horrible and totally inaccurate. Ride that dragon Carry and Carry us to oblivious rip offs. THEY MADE 7 FILMS OUT OF HER LIST OF BAD PRE-TEEN LITERATURE AND THEY ALMOST SELL EVERY TIME!!!

She must be some kind of God.

Amen.

An interesting film, a Must for youth

[fromwalking · 8/10 · 21 February 2007]

This is a film noir in my opinion. A drama about young people (16-18) and it reflects the problems they have these day's: either you belong to a certain group or you don't. In some groups you're cool if you go along using drugs, in others you'll be banned. It's a story of children of said ages that fall in love but don't know how to cope with that feeling. It's a movie about ambitions and parents that don't listen to well to their adolescence. Parents that keep their children on a leach and be suspicious. Not an easy job anyway. You see the normal everyday problems of families these days. Furthermore, good acting, hip-hop music by Brainpower, good camera works and editing. This is a Dutch film and a typical one too: meaning no nonsense, toilet scenes, frustrated mumblings and drugs. Reality detail: when using the internet to chat, you clearly see the popular MSN configurations. Spoken language is Dutch, but on the DVD you can have subtitles in Dutch (for Flamish viewers), English and French. Spoken language to too harsh, no violence, no sex, no death although the players do their best to get there. Great film.

a film that has to be seen

[matthias_stroobants · 10/10 · 29 December 2006]

It's an excellent movie: the tension is clearly sensible and there is even a moral: don't touch any drugs: it ruins your life. You know, these days many youth can be influenced by their friends to take drugs and sometimes it's hard to say no. That's why this film shows us, it's the best thing to do! It's not a movie like Eragon or something, so it's not a very spectacularly movie, but it certainly is a good movie! The only problem is, it's spoken in dutch. So people who can't understand dutch won't understand it... Even most Belgians will have some problems to understand it at the beginning, but in the middle of the movie they don't have those problems anymore... So just: it's a movie that has to be seen