Love Is All (2007)

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Just saw this movie and don't get the story. It is gobbledegook and in parts not in good taste. A comedy? Definitely not! Romance? Certainly not in the normal sense! The movie throws a number of people together, almost all of them sad misfits. It features a cougar jumping a 16 year old and other unsavory characters. There is also a silver fox who doesn't pull it off, but gets a prize in the end. But at least some souls find love, which is the title of the film.I did like the start of the movie with the arrival of Sinterklaas, his antics and heroic deed. But when he ran down the road, the movie got lost. Pity, as a child I lived in Amsterdam and wanted to relive this festivity. After all I played Sinterklaas myself in adulthood and even was a Zwarte Piet, with much better results. Because of the Sinterklaas bit in the beginning my overall rating is a modest 5.

A wonderful film showing a bunch of crappy characters, a nonsense storyline that tries to imitate Shortcuts, with very easy and convenient relations between the characters, highly improbable, with hints of racism spread a bit everywhere, bathing in this soup of forced laughs and unrealistic events. The writer of this film has probably never lived a love story or lived in the real world at all. This film looks like a mixture of all the Walt Disney movies put together, in high speed, and the result is an absurd shitty movie.First: How nice it is that the man who runs the funeral home where the dead Santa is brought is also the lost son of the new Santa ? And that the young 16 year old guy who works on the parade for the dead Santa is also at the funeral home on the day of the funeral, but for his own dead father, and meets the daughter of dead Santa who's 3 times his age and tells her upfront that he wants to have sex with her ? What on earth did the writer think?? An really, a Prince can stop a plane while it's accelerating to take off ? Cheap humor, unrealistic characters, events, the worst plot ever... 1 star is actually generous.

Who wouldn't want to unwrap Carice van Houten from her gift costume? She deserves her prince on the white horse because she comes to realize that she should believe in love. I also liked Anneke Blok, who plays a type that is rarely portrayed in Dutch movies: the busy mother who arranges everything and is heading towards a nervous breakdown. The gay couple is portrayed so matter-of-factly - not as some statement - that you are hardly aware that you are watching two men kiss each other on the lips.The first half hour of the movie is especially funny. The movie then loses some of its momentum, despite the rapid cuts between the story lines. Some of the jokes fall flat and one extra character is hastily introduced. The finale on snowy Santa Claus's birthday makes up for a lot, although I found it a bit too understated to serve as the climax and bold moral statement that this movie deserves.The multiple-story-line approach is a real balancing act and I applaud the filmmakers for their guts to set the bar so high. Also, I think to make a positive movie about love is in a way more daring than the cynical approach with a lot of cheap nudity, which since long has been the standard in Dutch movie-making. Judging by the numbers of visitors, the filmmakers have succeeded in making the audience believe in love, at least for a short while..

One of the best dutch movies i've seen so far. The acting is good, sometimes even excellent. Great work by some unknown actors and actresses. A lot of funny characters played by famous dutch people. The script is uplifting and smart, with some nice twists. Sometimes some obvious connections between the different story lines that are pointed out during the film, but still not overrated or overdone. A lot of humor with a nice combination of love, drama and twisted humor and awareness. A film you must see if you like dutch movies. Good girlfriend-boyfriend material for a night at the cinema, or even to watch with good friends before a night in the town!