It’s a balloon. Here, I’ll show you.

I recently got the chance to watch the Afrikaans teen-romantic-comedy-with-a-moral-lesson “Bakgat!” and to be quite honest, I think that local critics were too harsh, too hasty in their unsparing damnation of yet "another vulgar, common” teen movie. Yes, but this time they swear, curse and get scatalogical in Afrikaans. Yes, parts of “Bakgat!” are common; other parts are vulgar. However, taken for what it attempts to be, “Bakgat!” is easily more accomplished than many local films.

By basing the film on the Hollywood narrative previously encountered in “She’s All That” and “American Pie” (and many, many others), writer-director Henk Pretorius must’ve known that he was walking into the jaws of the lion from a critical point of view. The movie opens with one piece of clichéd dialogue after the other. Actually, it opens with a statement about how the participating high schools, Waterkloof and Eldoraigne, supported the film’s making in the name of Afrikaans culture – make of that what you want – and then the dialogue begins, along with some typically South African rugby shots. Characters are quickly established, using stereotypes as shortcuts to tell us who to root for and who to dislike. There’s the school honey, the nerd, the rugby overlord, the dimwit girlfriends, the two guys whose aim in teen life is to score.

I liked the way the film poked fun at the snobbish Easterlings of the city and some of the film is surprisingly enjoyable (an antidote to the crime and HIV-driven films that usually get funding in South Africa) and well made. There is no attempt at any notion of realism here; “Bakgat” proceeds to tell its story in an almost exclusively all-white Pretoria, while the only gay guy in the film is played only (and embarrassingly so) for cheap laughs. Of course, the point of this film was never to be ‘realistic’, but to appropriate a global model for telling simple stories to and for a minority group.

For better and for worse, it paid off. A sequel is rumoured to be planned for a festive season release.