Friday, January 6, 2012

There can be only one (let's hope)

 
Hoofmeisie, a new Afrikaans tween comedy by Morne du Toit and the team from the Film Factory (purveyors of Bakgat, Bakgat 2, Night Drive and Superhelde), got a rave review from one Afrikaans speaking critic and was lambasted by another critic in the Mail & Guardian who referred to the film as “impossible to watch”. Maybe what these critics and I should admit up front is that we’re not the target market for the film, having passed through primary school many, many years ago. This tale of a bunch of girls (and their mothers - where have all the fathers gone?) competing for the title of “hoofmeisie”, or head girl (the highest rung on the student representative council ladder), is clearly aimed at a very young audience indeed. However, old(er) as we may be, we do have something to say about the difference between good children’s entertainment and bad children’s entertainment. The best children’s entertainment works on most levels for most audiences as there’s something to appreciate for just about everyone. Surely no-one but the very, very young appreciates a mother squeezing out her daughter’s zit only to have its yellow content splash her soccer-mom face? 

Many American tween comedies are also mediocre, but it’s so much more unfortunate that Du Toit and his team chose to borrow from and imitate the worst that the tween comedy genre has to offer: badly written young romance, one-dimensional characters, psycho mothers. It ends up being very predictable, even for a film of its type.

Nadia (Misha’el de Beer) is a sweet natured, intelligent learner at Stumbo Pops Primary. Her BFF is the equally sweet Melissa (Annemicke Kotze) and her secret crush is Rikus (Ruan Wessels), who plays rugby. Thankfully the movie spares us a scene set at a primary school level rugby match, though it gives us instead a netball scene where the players and parents get so worked up that the coach turns a fire extinguisher on them. There are two main antagonists on the netball court and in the rest of the film: Susan (Melissa Massyn), who is sometimes referred to as Su-Satan, and Hetwieg (Jamie Lawrence). These are the girls who the movie shows as in being in contention the head girl title.

The good news, for what it’s worth, is that there are no fart jokes. There are one or two blink-and-you-miss-it attempts at satire. And the young actors are for most part amusing and entertaining, especially Melissa Massyn who on occasion displays a greater sense of comic timing than any adult actor in the film. Poor Hannes Muller. Poor Lida Botha, who seems to play the hyper caricatured version of the grandmother in Roepman. Poor Johan van der Merwe, who plays the stuttering Stumbo Pops principal, Mr Gouws, and ends up with cake on his face. This is a bad film with usually good actors.

How can I say whether a tween audience will think of the film as bad? I cannot, but I did watch the film with an audience consisting of parents and their children, and while there were a few chuckles here and there, there was absolutely no sustained laughter. There are a few jokes aimed at older viewers, but these fall flat; weren’t Malema jokes old a year ago?

There’s a moral to the story that parents will appreciate, I suppose; be true to yourself, be nice to your friends, don’t be nasty to your enemies, and so forth. But in between all of this, there’s a bizarre scene between Mr Gouws and a cleaner (from what I can tell), a young black woman who replaces a photo of Gouws with a framed photograph of Nelson Mandela. This apparently teaches him about merit and doing what’s right. There’s nothing wrong with the sentiment, but the film handles it in such an amateurish fashion it’s cringe worthy – consider how we are supposed to believe that a previously “invisible” black character suddenly initiates change in a middle aged white man’s life. I guess I should mention that the most openly violent and destructive character in the film is Hetwieg, who is non-white; of the four main young females, she also has the least dialogue.

Equally embarrassing is the film’s attempts at safe religiosity. When the film opens, we learn that Nadia is an orphan who resides with her grandmother (Marie Pentz). When Nadia tells her that her parents are looking down at them from heaven, Grandma confesses that she doesn’t believe in “the Bethlehem star” anymore. Surely it is not a spoiler when I say that the film provides an opportunity for Grandma to reconsider this position. Why on earth bring in this theme if you only spend two sentences on it? And such badly written sentences at that? Indeed, the film spends more time on Isak Davel in a red speedo.

Hoofmeisie
is a threadbare story that has more product placements than a Bond movie; indeed, there is a scene set during the school’s Entrepreneurial Day that seems to be in the film only to throw together a few brands (and, lest I forget, to get Isak Davel in a speedo). Talking about odd creative decisions: the film tells the majority of its story in flashback, taking its cue from, can you believe it, The Usual Suspects. Where it served a purpose in the latter crime classic, there is no reason why Hoofmeisie should be told like this. The kid behind me told his father that he “didn’t know what is going on”.
I wish I could tell you good things about Hoofmeisie, but I cannot. It’s not enough to have a comedy in Afrikaans; it has to be a funny comedy in Afrikaans. It seems as if too many Afrikaans speaking people are willing to spend money and time on Afrikaans products simply because it’s in Afrikaans and not necessarily because it’s a good film. I’m sure that many people have enjoyed and will enjoy Hoofmeisie with their families in the name of good, clean family viewing, but to those people I want to say: have you seen Whale Rider, The Sandlot, Millions, The Princess Bride? I’ll concede that these movies are not in Afrikaans but they’re much, much better than Hoofmeisie if family viewing is what you’re looking for.

2 comments:

Hans said...

Dankie tog, ons het voor Kuifie en Hoofmeisie gestaan, en op Kuifie besluit. Ek sal hierdie met Klaradyn kyk, maar sal wag vir DVD. Dit was heerlik om Kuifie saam met 'n graad 2-dogtertjie te kyk - ek het haar langs my, by tye meer as die fliek geniet. Ons het Whale Rider ook saam met haar geniet. Sal moeite doen met die ander wat jy noem.

Anonymous said...

Chris I truly think you should look at the movie through the eyes of a child to truly formulate an opinion to crit the Hoofmeisie movie. As a headboy in both primary and high school I got to know about the politics behind the title and the involvement of parents behind the scenes and I give the movie 90 percent and that's high in local terms. I hope that parents get to see the movie for what its worth and also learn something from it. I doubt very much that it was made to compete with the international market and shouldn't be compared to Whalerider etc. I also hope that the young actors become prosperous and this movie sets them on the path to success, for which they will be forever grateful. I admire the makers of this movie for growing local talent and playing a part in the lives of the young actors.