Tricked

The story behind Tricked, a 50-minute fictional film directed for Dutch TV by Paul Verhoeven, is as interesting as the story onscreen. Screenwriter Kim van Kooten wrote the first five pages of a script, which introduce the 50th birthday party of a husband, father, and partner in a business—a man named Remco (Peter Blok)—and then invited the public to carry the narrative forward by submitting subsequent scenes, essentially making Tricked a crowdsourced film. Producer Rene Mioch then invited Verhoeven to read through the submissions, fashion a complete script from the pieces, and shoot the movie (a professional screenwriter eventually rewrote the resulting patchwork script in order to incorporate ideas throughout). The result is a soap opera with a satirical edge and a blackly comic sense of humor, featuring sexual affairs, backhanded business dealings, a pregnancy, and blackmail. Remco's wife (Ricky Koole) threatens to leave him over his pregnant ex-mistress (Sallie Harmsen), his daughter (Carolien Spoor) is a drunk who is disgusted with dad's philandering, and his son (Robert De Hoog) is a sex-mad slacker. It's a clever script (especially given its unusual development), and Verhoeven and the cast revel in the spectacle of bad behavior and witty twists. Also unusual is the fact that the film opens with a half-hour documentary on the creation and production of the movie, a rather self-congratulatory introduction in which Verhoeven talks about how the process revitalized him creatively. More than simply a clever stunt, Tricked is a funny and engaging black comedy, although it's the gimmick that will likely intrigue most viewers. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)