Although it's hard to see the commercial (or moral) value in rereleasing this extremely dull and slightly worrying 1975 adolescent comedy from apartheid-era South Africa except as just a time capsule into a shameful era of Afrikaaner white supremacy. And although the film seems on the surface to be little more than just a harmless window into the everyday life of mischievous 12-year-old Trompie (Andre Laubsher), the self-appointed ringleader of an anemic gang of other bored social outcasts who follow his every whim, the film ends on a distasteful race-conscious note that unfortunately wouldn’t have challenged apartheid relations in South Africa at the time. Nevertheless, for much of the film’s duration, we follow troublemaker Trompie and his raggedy cadre of hangers-on as they involve themselves in one ill-advised extracurricular activity after another—whether it's setting someone’s pet baboon loose for a rampage about town, ruining the school play, or testing their slingshot skills in class.
Trompie manages to avoid any serious blame through elaborately conceived excuses that a succession of laughably credulous authority figures seems to unfailingly accept. The weird sense of social unease begins to gather in the latter part of the film when Trompie befriends a friendly dog, Boseman, who belongs to an itinerant black man in the area named Safania (his relationship to the boy’s family is kept ambiguous). Trompie begins a friendly relationship with Safania, but takes a real shine to Boseman. In fact, we see Trompie praying to God that the dog will someday be his. This rather desperate appeal for divine intervention, however, seems to work. After Trompie pigheadedly pesters Savania about giving up the dog, the generous traveler finally relents and sets up the distasteful final scene. Safania graciously sets up a challenge, essentially leaving Boseman to choose its owner. The outcome’s implications, however subtle, still say plenty about the prevailing attitudes about white entitlement in South Africa and Afrikaner Calvinist ideas about being “chosen people.” Apart from the film’s dubious racial politics, what’s also inexcusable in the film is the crazymaking proto-Teletubbies theme song that seems to loop endlessly each time Trompie and his followers scurry around town looking for their kiddie thrills. Not Recommended.