Abeltje (1998)
Genre: Family / Adventure
Duration: 110 minuten
Alternative titles: Abeltje en het Mysterie van Quoquapepapetl / The Flying Liftboy
Country:
Netherlands / Luxembourg / Belgium / United States / Germany / Spain
Directed by: Ben Sombogaart
Stars: Rick van Gastel, Soraya Smith and Frits Lambrechts
IMDb score:
6,0 (1.868)
Releasedate: 26 November 1998
This movie is not available on US streaming services.
Abeltje plot
Abeltje starts working as an elevator operator in a large department store that has opened in his village. He is a dreamer and wonders what the green button at the top of the elevator is for. With the people in his elevator, a girl he knows, a singing teacher and a salesperson in mothballs, he is launched through the roof of the department store with no control over the elevator or knowing where they will end up.
Reviews & comments
Wheely5
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- 69 messages
- 100 votes
I understand that a story has to be adapted to become a movie from a book. But this film has only a few similarities with the book. The story with the doppelganger is really just completely different and certainly not in the spirit of writer Annie MG Schmidt. Guns and slavery is really not something she would bring up in a children's book.
Very sorry for this result
Translated from Dutch · View original
Theunissen
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- 12279 messages
- 5519 votes
Hip (certainly for that time), quickly edited film version of Annie's book MG 34 Schmidt.
Abeltje Roef (Rick van Gastel) works as a very young elevator operator in the new department store "Knots". The manager there absolutely does not allow him to touch the intriguing green button in the elevator. When he does press the green button at the top of the elevator, he, his girlfriend Laura (Soraya Smith), singing teacher Juffrouw Klaterhoen (Marisa Van Eyle), and a dealer in mothballs, Jozias Tump (Frits Lambrechts) are launched. In the flying elevator they travel around the world and end up in New York and the fictional South American country of Perugona, where a revolution is underway.
The 1953 youth book was given a modern sauce to make the film suitable for the intended young audience. For example, Abeltje got a skateboard, he wears an earring and he thinks things are "great cool". Although this film adaptation and the book differ (including the ending with the volcano and the love story between Abeltje and Laura), the story has not really suffered from the modernization, because Annie MG Schmidt's fantasy and humor remain strikingly present in this fun children's film.
The actors also perform well and especially Annet Malherbe (who plays a double role as Mother Roef and Mrs. Cockle-Smith and you have to look closely to realize that it is the same actress) and Frits Lambrechts (as the trader in mothballs and who also becomes president of Perugona, after a coup has taken place) stand out and there was clearly enough money to film in Spain and New York, among others, instead of the Netherlands.
All in all a fun and entertaining 90s Family / Adventure film, or rather youth film.
Translated from Dutch · View original
kissyfur
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- 325 messages
- 499 votes
Very much a product of its time. Director and cameraman should have been fired for eating too much mothballs. What a bad assembly! What a nervous camera work. What a troubled way to tell. You expect it to end after a while, but the whole movie is like that.
Miles from Mrs. Schmidt's mood. Half point is the minimum. Half a point extra for the role of Herman Koch.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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