In order to keep his wife, an alcoholic with a tendency to do dumb stunts must bed his country’s biggest star. To achieve this, he enlists himself as a low-budget stuntman on her films.
Written and directed by the New Kids filmmaking duo of Steffen Haars and Flip Van der Kuil, Ron Goossens, Low-Budget Stuntman is no different than their usual as in its completely nuts and irreverent. Here they build a story on a ridiculous premise that goes through a bunch of insane hoops to eventually end rather logically and even sweetly and positively for the lead. Their characters are all somewhat caricatures of people, even those based on real people or played by the people themselves. The story is cohesive nonsense if that is even a thing. They throw something at the audience throughout the film that some of it is bound to stick. The whole thing is completely bonkers yet a lot of fun and insanely entertaining.
The cast is led by writer/director Steffen Haars’ brother Tim Haars as Ron. Here he takes this part and makes it fully his, committing to the insanity and nonsense while also giving a good almost always drunk version of a town loser. He manages to create a human out of the caricatured character, making the audience care about him and the outcome of his crazy quest to get laid with another woman to please his estranged wife. Playing that woman is actress Bo Maerten playing herself or an exaggerated and deeply flawed version of herself. She shows a great capacity at poking fun at herself, her life, and her career. She is a bit of a scene stealer at times and of course absolutely stunning to make Ron’s quest make at least some sense. Other characters in the film are played mostly for laughs or to show off Ron, his drunkenness, and his stunts. The whole film pretty much revolves around him and it makes sense in a way.
The stunts in the film are shot like big action films but with a twist, something made possible by the cinematography of Joris Kerbosch who shoots this film in a way that makes sure everything is visible and well into view, especially when stunts are happening. The stunts themselves are fantastically well done, even if a good part of them are done for the laughs more than the wow effect. Stunt coordinator Willem de Beukelaer and his team clearly did fantastic work and used the set ups to their best potential, getting some stunts done for the stunt side of things while others are done in a great way that turns them into comedic elements. Their talent is shown throughout the film with seemingly failed stunts that end up hurting no one, which shows the extent at which they are knowledgeable and capable of pulling just about anything off.
Ron Goossens, Low-Budget Stunman is one of those insane films that should not make sense, but it does. The humor is at times, or often even, a bit juvenile and inappropriate, but a lot of it works. The film has a way of dealing with its humor and very dark comedy in a way that makes almost anything acceptable. In the filmmakers’ universe, not much is off limits. This is one that may not be for everyone, but there seems to be something for everyone in this insane film.
Fantasia International Film Festival runs from July 13th to August 2nd.