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Reviews
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Kids = Gooood!; Adults = Baaaad!
Sounds like bleating, doesn't it? Spot on! That is indeed intention to sound like the sheep in Orwell's "Animal Farm".
Frankly: All kids MUST love this. Simply because it's according to their thinking: emotional, straightforward, open-hearted, without monetary ambitions etc. The adults are, almost in a stereotypical way, the bad guys here: except for Elliot's mother, who must be regarded as a neutral person, i. e. neither 'good' nor 'bad'. Notable adult roles are the government people trying to wiretap the kids' dialogues; the doctors who don't listen to each other but each of them talking their sort of "I was the better medicine student" gobbledigook at the very same time. The scene with E. T. in the box and the doctors around him babbling hectically reminded me a little bit of the no less stereotypical "Planet Of The Apes" with a similar annotation of "doing experiments with the innocent and defenseless". That's exactly where Spielberg creates bias on kids so that they'll exclaim something like "A typical doctor's behavior!", since each one claims his diagnosis to be the best, and makes it happen: that is, his own thought of 'best possible medication' of the mysterious creature from outer space...
And furthermore, the (child?) viewer will summarize: merely kid's true love and friendship can even resurrect an alien from its 'death.' (I've put the quotes here to avoid spoiling too much)
Pinkeltje (1978)
Beautiful film! I'd loved to watch this as a child.
Unfortunately, I could not, because I am not Dutch, but German. In Germany, Dick Laan's books are known as well; Pinkeltje's German name is "Pünkelchen", most likely because of an unwanted second meaning of the original name ...
To my knowledge, this film hasn't ever been dubbed, which is a huge loss in my opinion. Gladly I am also a collector of foreign dramatized audio books, hence I had the lucky occasion to know about the "Pinkeltje hoorspel", which was an 55-minute adaptation on LP from the film, which I obtained later, too. This film is much more beautiful than most so-called children's classics I have watched. Wieteke van Dort is brilliant, and incredibly cute as Pinkeltje's wife "Pinkelotje". Some nice puns, of course, are only possible in the original language: for instance, the balloon, by means of which Pinkeltje and his wife fly to their own author Dick Laan (heart-warmingly played by 62-year-old Bob de Lange, who, by the way, acted in his very last role, only few months before he sadly passed away in December 1978!) is called HEEN EN WEER BALLON. This cannot be translated without loss of the pun, as Dutch "heen en weer" means "back and forth", but "weer" also means "weather" as a second meaning.
The story is fairly nifty and, thank goodness, not too trivial: One of the Pinkels, Pinkelbaron Krikhaar (Lex Goudsmit), has been missing for several weeks, hence the other Pinkels try to find him. Through a pair of magic "dreaming glasses", Pinkeltje is able to see one his long-lost fellow, pitifully locked up in a hamster's cage. When he hands the glasses over to his wife, she is lucky to spot a telephone located next to the cage, and Pinkeltje manages to take one of Dick's "heavy" pencils and even write down the number which Pinkelotje reads out loud for him. The number is given to Dick Laan, by means of which he now manages to figure out where the crooks live who had locked up Pinkelbaron Krikhaar in a cage. Dick takes Pinkeltje and Pinkelotje in his car, stopping at a joke article store - buying ... well it is up to you to find that out what he bought there. This thingamajig is used at the crooks' house to wreak havoc amongst them and hopefully (?) free all Pinkels...?
All in all, a beautiful film with good acting (also on the baddies' site, who - typically - act as complete wallies) and a nice story. Devoid of any violence and recommended for ALL kids! (who understand Dutch, that is)