De gulle minnaar (1990) User Reviews (4)

An incredible mess. Seeing in believing.

[MishaD · 3/10 · 9 September 2003]

I don't know where to begin in describing this film's faults. Its terrible corny script is a springboard for some of the worst acting ever in a dutch film. And that's really saying something. Van Kolck is appalling as the female lead, although this may be partly due to the terrible voice dubbing of her role. The other actors fare little better, and Millecam's performance is an all-time low by any standard.

Directing is virtually absent. Most scenes play out as amateurish, badly-lit vignettes with a sense of humor that seems to be aimed mainly at fouryear-olds. And don't get me started on the annoying child actor, the lame sex scenes and the boring music.

Only recommended for masochists.

A fascinating experience in all the wrong ways

[Nijn1978 · 1/10 · 12 April 2008]

De Gulle Minnaar is exactly the kind of movie which made a lot of Dutch people at the time say that they didn't like Dutch movies. This is a crude, unfunny picture. And if the story wasn't so ineptly told, this mess would have been also really offensive. The makers (or should I say maker, as I believe that much of the blame is squarely on the shoulders of producer Rob Houwer) tried to put a feminist message into this picture, as the movies are based on two novels of writer Marjan Berk. But their so-called humorist approach to the material turns out very sexist.

The story of De Gulle Minnaar is centered round Peter Heg (played by Peter Faber), who lives in an affluent neighborhood in Amsterdam with his son Tommie. Every morning he brings his son to school and gets hit on by every mother and, because he's a very generous man (no really, that's his excuse!), he sleeps with all of them, including the wife of his best friend (a matter that is laughably resolved along the lines of "Oh, you f*cked my wife... . Okay! Let's laugh about it! Haha!"). But anyway, the supposedly beautiful Mascha Silman (Mariska van Kolck) drops in his life, for reasons that are much to convoluted to explain. Mascha has a cooking radio show, although she can't cook to save her life (another example of this films very sophisticated humor). They fall in love, and Peter secretly stops all his love affairs. But because, again, he's so generous, he screws a couple of his mistresses for the last time. Soon, again in ways much to convoluted to explain, Mascha finds out about Peter's affairs and she leaves him. Of course, Peter misses her and tries to win her back, which...he does! But this doesn't mean the movie has ended. Oh no! there's an even more unbearable act that follows. Mascha has agreed to appear on a live cooking show on television along with two other famous female cooks. Because Mascha can't cook (the running gag again!), Peter decides to help her out. How? Well, he knocks one of the other female cooks out, disguises himself in drag and appears on the show as the famous colleague of Mascha. It all ends with Peter throwing the food ingredients at the TV people, after which Mascha, Peter and his son Tommie run out of the studio laughing about it all.

This movie was supposedly directed by the female Mady Saks. But after the movie came out, she explicitly and repeatedly said that she did the movie as a director-for-hire and that she didn't have any control on the finished product. The movie credits seem to underline her reasons as a credit shows that producer Rob Houwer supervised the editing. This producer has one claim to greatness: he produced five Dutch movies of director Paul Verhoeven (RoboCop, Basic Instinct), including the two masterpieces Turks Fruit (aka Turkish Delight) and Soldaat van Oranje (aka Soldier of Orange). After their collaboration, and Verhoeven's departing to Hollywood, Houwer somehow believed that he was the ultimate creative force behind the movies he did with Verhoeven. And with every movie, his name has constantly overshadowed the director. But these movies have been very mediocre at best (Van Geluk Gesproken, De Kleine Blonde Dood) or downright awful. De Gulle Minnaar belongs to the last section.

The terrible screenplay is on a par with the acting. The supporting cast is terrible, especially Syliva Millecam as Peter's ex-mistress and his nemesis. After the movie she achieved great fame and acclaim for her comedic work on television shows. Her career was cut short because of her tragic death in 2001 of breast cancer. I admired her in a lot of things, but unfortunately not here. Lead actor Peter Faber isn't badly cast and tries his best, but he consistently stumbles. The last thing is also the case with lead actress Mariska van Kolck. At the time, she actually was a well-known TV-presenter in the Netherlands with limited acting experience. Her non-existent performance in De Gulle Minnaar almost killed her career. Hell, she herself has even stated that she hated the movie and her performance. In a recent interview she said that she rushed out of the theater after the premiere and skipped the after party, because she was so embarrassed.

The movie also stinks on the technical department. The dubbing is truly awful. The cinematography is ugly and not indicative of DP Frans Bromet's other work. The same is also true for the musical score by Henny Vrienten.

The only reason that made me watch this movie until the end was that it fascinated me in a perverse way. I kept on looking, and thought to myself that this wretched movie couldn't get any worse. But, of course, it did. The experience was comparable to watching the aftermath of a spectacular disaster.

BAAAAAAAD

[derk-rijks · 28 December 2003]

This film is so intens bad, that it's not even fun to watch. What a terrible story, and the acting goes beyond bad. No good example of Dutch quality cinema, try to watch The Fourth Man, Spetters (allthough the acting is also pretty messy) or De Lift.

overall good, but promised so much more

[abknor · 6/10 · 3 August 2003]

This movie has a great plot, a good script, mediocre cinematography and bad acting. Depending on which you find important, you might find it good for its kind or flat-out horrible.

Had Hollywood production values been adhered to completely, De Gulle Minnaar (lit. The Generous Lover) might actually have made a good romantic comedy of errors.

Peter is a single houseman who brings his son to school every morning and meets a lot of lonely women that way, whom he consequently sleeps with. Then he meets the beautiful Mascha and falls head over heels in love with her. Even his son seems to like her, so the story is about to end before it even started. Except ... there are still quite a few housewives who are not yet willing to give up their daily morning special, i.e. Peter.

Peter tries to ignore their beckonings, but that is pretty hard to do, especially if one of his lovers threatens to kill herself. A great set-up, but it gets even better in the second half of the film. Peter might have gotten away with his philandering, but Mascha is a famous cook show presenter and as such she is under the scrutiny of the national gossip press. A paparazzo finds out she is dating Peter and starts to stalk him. Soon his uncovering of Peter's love life is all over the papers, and Mascha breaks up with Peter.

The second half of the movie shows two people on the rebound, who just have been advertised all over the national media as good love makers, and who try to turn down advances, but at the same time are not completely averse to all the suiters.

A film like this needs not one, but two leads who can carry the movie. Otherwise you get a second What Dreams May Come, in which the actors cannot convey the least believable chemistry between the lovers. Peter Faber plays the rôle of Peter Heg on the auto-pilot, but he pulls it off, somehow. Mariska van Kolck was believably cast as the pretty, happy-go-lucky yuppie who had landed a dream job of presenting a cooking show; and Masha does not even know how to cook! Unfortunately for Van Kolck, at times there is some real acting involved, and that's where the toe-clinching, nail-biting begins. She cannot act! She is a line-sayer. You could have put a robot in her place, and it would of produced the dialogue with at least the same amount of emotion.

The unfortunate end-result is that the brain automatically starts to wander everytime Masha is on-screen, and the film starts to be only about Peter. When that happens, Peter becomes that n-th male protagonist of a Dutch film, in which the sex is more important than the story. From a love sitcom, the film turns into a documentary about a pervert.

There actually are some good actors in this movie, but only in very small parts.

Although I would generally rate the script to be good, the writing is clunky at times, ruining some of the jokes. The cinematography is effective, but crude at times. Clearly it feels like the only ones in this production who understood comedy were Peter Faber (a stand-up comedian once) and the writers, Marjan Berk and Rob Houwer.

I would love to see this remade, right this time. Perhaps by film makers from France, where they understand both how to make a comedy and how not to make a film appear flat and unintelligent; or from Britain, where they are masters of the double entendre.