Luckily Oerlemans dared to finally choose a serious subject for a film after his two ridiculous and degrading movies about a small village near the Meuse riverside (Maaskantje). I was very surprised to hear that Nova Zembla would be in 3D, because most 'normal' movies (not animation-films I mean) are not totally in 3D and the effect doesn't blow me away at all. The 3D effects of Nova Zembla are not impressive at all, even for my low expectations. Although the moment of the ice bear-attack is a little exiting, most shots of the bear remind me of my last visit to the Zoo when I was little and will not be remembered as breathtaking. Now let us talk about boobies, because I had an overdoses of boob in the first quarter of the film that in my view didn't add anything to the story whatsoever. Enough about the technical aspects of the film. Let us focus more on the story that Oerlemans is telling us. In primary and middle school in the Netherlands, the subject Nova Zembla as the beginning of the exploration era with the 'Golden Age' as paramount moment is a well known story. But it is a little old and dusty. Oerlemans lures both adults and children to the cinema and teaches us about the explorers of the sixteenth century in the most vivid way possible. We see the men with beards and strange clothing boarding a relatively small vessel full of faith and confidence in the success of the expedition. At the island we see them suffer but still confident that they will get back alive after the winter darkness. Apart from some individuals that do not survive, most of them do in fact what brings an kind of happy ending to the film. Thank you Reinout, for renewing this old story about those brave men.

While I think the 3D-effect in today's cinema should enhance the human experience to get a certain feeling of stepping right into the scene, the three dimensional engineers of the Nova Zembla crew are taking the effect way too far. The extreme shallow dept-of-field (DOF) of most of the scenes creates an very unnatural effect. Not like the human eye it would see. 3D in Nova Zembla brings unnecessary unsharpness to wide shots instead of crisp details. It reminds me more of early cartoons and anime/manga than state-of-the-art improvement of the modern cinema experience. A missed chance for Reinout...

On the other hand, the shots from above (like the viewing angle used in the shots where we can see the boat from above) are well filmed. And the 3D-effect while filming from a lower angle through the grass does a great job. But those are just minutes of the whole movie play time.

Nova Zembla doesn't hold up to the promises made. In fact, it fails utterly, which, truly, is a shame. An adventurous story, a beautiful setting and (for Dutch standards) good acting but all that cannot make watching this film bearable.

The storytelling is unbelievably slow. While being promised an action-packed heroic story it instead halts drastically every time a little climax should be due, resulting in the opposite. And if your film is to be made for a Dutch audience based on a classic Dutch history lesson almost every Dutch person will remember, you just can't get away with it. Not even with showing random scenes of Doutzen Kroes' breasts.

The cast was fine though and the acting wasn't particularly bad. The lines didn't seem forced and it all had a genuine feel, which is often lacking in Dutch films. The technical side of this film wasn't bad either and the effects, costumes, locations and props are a rare perfect blend.

It is clear this film lacked the experience of a great captain and should be a learning opportunity for inexperienced director Reinout Oerlemans. Nova Zembla fails to hoist the colours and sail full speed ahead and instead feels more like a rowing boat without oars. A typical trailer-beats-film.