User Reviews

I watched the first Team Spirit just before I went the same day to the cinema to watch the second one.

About the first one I only can tell that I enjoyed watching it. Ok, the story is easy, some friends in a café football team, but I didn't feel bored one sec! And also the music was just great (for example, Jan Leyers)!

The feeling I had about the second one is even better. I left the building with a big smile on my face. The actors are almost all the same as in the first, only a bit years older and the friendship is still alive. The rest you have to go see yourself... I only can say that the movie made me smile, made me feel sometimes a bit sad and especially made me see that life is easier if you have friends who are there for you.

Heads up for Jan Verheyen and his crew. Belgium is not Hollywood I know but a good movie is a good movie!

And so Jan Verheyen is back for more, after a first movie and a tv-series about a group of friends who play football together while facing the challenges of supporting a family and becoming parents.

The plotlines are pretty believable in and of themselves: one of the central couples in the movie turn out to be barren en therefore try to adopt a child, only to be hindered at every turn by a sneaky little bureaucrat. One of the other members of the football team has a problem with his girlfriend performing as a stripper. Yet another one becomes father to triplets, one of them is blackmailed out of a promotion at work etc... You can almost conceivably imagine these things to happen in real life.

But the problem with this movie is that on the one hand, it wants to talk about problems that real people face (not being able to have children, trouble at work, depression after having a baby, feeling like life is closing in all around you after becoming a parent etc...), but on the other hand, it also wants to be a feel good-movie. And that means that no matter what, the script has to bend over backwards if necessary to get to a happy ending. Every problem must be resolved, every tear needs to be turned into a smile before the credits roll. And I'm afraid it'll be painfully obvious to anyone over the age of twelve that life just isn't like that. The movie tries to have it both ways, and the result is a story that ends up losing all credibility it might have had at one point.

Also, it must be said that the product placement was strong in this one. At two points in the movie, the story is essentially just stopped in order for one of the characters to shamelessly advertise a Belgian internet provider. I mean, having the main characters wear the logo of this company on their uniforms is one thing (what do we care, after all?), but basically interrupting the story for a commercial, like they would on tv? Come on!

I think that part of the problem is that Jan Verheyen, this movie's director and co-writer, is a great producer, but not much of a writer or director. He knows how to sell a product, he knows how to edit a movie so that it'll flash by in what seems like a second, but he simply doesn't know a good story, nor do I think he cares much, as long as he's able to produce something that's just slick enough to appeal to an audience of popcorn-eating teenagers. Somewhere beneath the charicatures that populate this story (Axel Daeseleire and Tania Kloek play two people who are described as "belonging to a lower social class" and do this with all the vulgarity and condescension the cliché image of such people demands), there actually might be a decent movie waiting to be found. A lot of these characters are interesting, have some appeal at least, and some of the basic storythreads deserve to be fleshed out more in a movie that's not afraid to sell you something that doesn't smack of a mega-happy ending.

Awful movie. It's a shame that a few of Flanders's top actors and actresses made such a lamentably poor film.

There is barely something changed since the first movie and the TV series: same actors, same prototype characters, same scenario (emotional complications, the team under emotional pressure but everything turn out tip-top after a predictable grand finale). Another constant fact in the work of Jan Verheyen is the exaggerated product placement (company logo's on the team's shirt and along side the pitch OK but two times a commercial (by one of the characters) about an internet provider is just over the top.

Meanwhile, rumour has it about the making of a second series for Flanders commercial TV station 'VTM' (coincidental or not, the station where Jan Verheyen is programmation manager since a few months)

To conclude ... and the golden raspberry award for worst foreign movie goes to ... Team Spirit 2

I don't believe they made this film. Completely unnecessary. The first film was okay. But there was no need for a sequel, certainly not after a television series that was already a sequel to the first film. This film feels like a soap-opera. The writing is so bad, it's utterly simple. The jokes don't come across, the acting is flat, it's shot like a soap, it lacks any direction. The first film had a good emotional spine behind it. Every character had a little arc. It was very simple then but somehow it worked and I could see the merit of that film. But this time around, there is no cohesive story-line. The characters are dull stereotypes and nothing interesting happens. One good thing: the Brazilian boy who plays Axel Daeseleire's son is pretty well cast. That was their one moment of creative success on this film. I hear they already shot a second television series as a sequel to 'Team Spirit 2' but please God, don't let them make a third feature installment...

This movie is just plain bad. Weak story , weak directing and below average acting. The thing that really irritated me was the blatant advertising - constantly - for a well known internet provider. It is obvious some scenes are written to do just that , advertising. This movie is a slap in the face to anyone who payed money for this.

Do not watch this, it not worth your time.

I begin with confessing that I already saw this movie twice by now! And I don't regret it!

Look, of course, this is a feel-good-movie! You could have seen that one coming! If you don't like that kind of films, you shouldn't have gone in the first place! You can't expect every new Belgium movie to be a new Daens or Anyway the wind blows! I, for once, think that Team Spirit 2 is a perfectly enjoyable movie! So did my mother, my best friend and I guess everyone who bought a ticket that night I went! Because everyone laughed during the movie and everyone came out with a smile on their face! And if that is a bad thing, then I don't know what 's wrong with the world!

I do agree on one point! The advertising is horrible! It just gets annoying! I started hating the colour yellow!!! But if the advertising was necessary to make the movie (budget), I might as well accept it! Because anyway: the movie is worth its price!! So go and see it!