A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

This Dutch classic by Dick Maas, director of the highly suspenseful film 'The Lift' (De Lift - 1983) and the awful 'Sint' (2010), was a huge success in the Netherlands in the eighties, mostly appealing to those with the typical sense of humor of a teenager.I'm in my forties now and must admit I've seen it more than a dozen times and still enjoy it a lot. It's quite rude but none more so than many other films I saw over the years and judging by Simon Pegg's and Nick Frost's success these days there's a more than willing audience for this kind of fun.The story is about a family of asocial misfits who are relocated to a villa in an upper class neighborhood, the only available place due to housing shortage. Their eccentric behavior to say the least causes havoc among the local residents who take the law into their own hands trying to get rid of the family, eventually discovering they're not much different. Housing issues are common in overcrowded areas in the Netherlands where in the eighties whole communities had to be taken down because of severe industrial pollution of the grounds they were built on.Most of the humor is of a sexual nature in a very basic sense. It's with toe clenching satisfaction to safely observe so much obscenity but with an almost delicate touch that puts serious social problems into perspective. Incest, alcoholism, neglect of the elderly, Dick Maas tackles them beautifully in a great social satire.Some reviews mention a typical Dutch sense of humor. I think there's a certain amount of sexual obscenities and slapstick in films from loads of other countries and often with a much darker and scarier background. If there must be a typical Dutch sense of humor I'd rather think of Alex van Warmerdam's films 'Abel' and 'The Northerners'. If there's something typically Dutch in this film though, it's friendly rudeness.The film is done low budget but it doesn't make it any less enjoyable. The acting is fine throughout the film and Nelly Frijda as Ma Flodder is epic. She, Huub Stapel (Johnnie Flodder), René van 't Hoff (son Kees) and Tatjana Simic (daughter Kees) are showbiz veterans and as a team carry this film to a higher level than it's been given credit for.Look out for the memorable scene where daughter Kees for blackmail purposes seduces horny neighbor Neuteboom (Bert André).Followed by Flodder in Amerika! (1992), Flodder 3 (1995) and a five season TV series (1993-1998).

...and I thought the only things I knew about the Low Countries were wooden shoes, tulips, windmills and Rembrandt. For the first eighteen years of my life, I thought that movie was made in Quebec. I was not the only one, though. In Canadian french, that movie and its two sequels were named "Les Lavigueurs Déménagent" ( The Lavigueurs are moving) after a poor Montreal family that won the lottery jackpot a few months before. They were already the laughing stock of the province, then people started to think that movie was really about them! The promoters thought they'd make a bunch of money out of what was "Flavor of the month" back then, not really smart, not really kind either. The movie showed the Lavigueurs (Floodders) as ill-mannered, horny 24-7 (even incestuous!) hillbillies but if you ask me the real ill-mannered hillbillies without any class were the Quebec promoters for making money by covering other people's reputation in dirt.On top of that, the movie was one of the first foreign movies to be translated in joual (Quebec working-class slang) instead of the usual standard French and in the sequel, the family is said (still only in the Quebec version) to be from Saguenay. Two more reasons for francophone viewers to think the movie is as quebecer as poutine and vachon cakes.The movie itself is still hilariously politically non-correct. No matter what greedy promoters did here, it kicks butt all over the world!

Dick Maas made and wrote his first of the Flodders-trilogy as a brilliant comedy without knowing that there would be two sequels which were not so strong. The housing problem in Holland in cities like Amsterdam or Rotterdam is acute and there is above all the problem of illegal immigrants. And what more is: living on a belt or next to a chemical plant can be dangerous. Flodder is more than a simple comedy: it is also a social satire of the cool Dutch bourgeosie who wants to be isolated of the big towns where there is criminality and so on but who goes to the warm countries during holidays to change their mediocre existence. Take Yolanda (Apollonia van Ravenstein), she is bored by her neighbourhood where never happens anything - there are f.i. no "café's" - and tired of her husband Kolonel Wim Kruisman (Herbert Flack) and she starts a sexual adventure with Johny Flodder (Huub Stapel). Alcoholism is also a subject of the movie: the alcohol is made at home and consumed in high quantities and whisky is drunk in floods by Kolonel Kruisman. This comedy is unsurpassed and is at the same time a sociological study of the escape out of town of the high-class citizens to the outskirts.

Flodder is without a doubt the funniest film I've ever seen. Timing is the keyword in this movie. I've must have seen the movie for more than 30 times. Every time I discover something new that makes me laugh out loud. The acting is superb and so is the directing. All in all, this is maybe the best movie ever made in Holland.10/10