Family, Movie Reviews

Snuf de Hond in Oorlogstijd (Sniff the Dog in Wartime)

Drama / Family 2008 / 95 minutes RATING: 8/10 If you came to this review as a huge fan of the Piet Prins' Scout series, this is not quite the movie you were looking for. It is based on Scout: the Secret of the Swamp, and like the book it has a Dutch boy named Tom who owns a beautiful, intelligent German Shepherd. And the two of them fight Nazis and aid the Canadian soldiers who have come to free the Netherlands at the close of Word War II. But while the book's Tom is a pleasant kid trying to deal with troubling times, in this film Tom is an orphan, angry at everyone after his parents were killed by German bombers. That's a way to give his character a bit more grit and depth, but does also make him less lovable. But it also gives his Friesan farmer uncle a reason to let him have a German Shepherd pup! Together the two of them set out to frustrate Nazi plans. But what can just a boy and his dog do against the German war machine? Well, more than you might imagine. They even have to contend with a collaborator pretending to be a Dutch loyalist. There was enough here of Piet Prins' original to win my approval and keep my interest. Cautions This is a a pretty tame story, but does involve a war, so the biggest caution would just be gentle hearts not realizing that there were wicked collaborators. However, this is in Dutch (no English dubbing) so it requires that viewers be old enough to handle the English subtitles. That means they'll need to be somewhere around 10, and that's probably old enough to deal with the reality of traitors too.. Conclusion This is hard to find, and not on streaming currently anywhere I can find. But that's always changing so here's hoping! If you do track it down, there are three more Snuf/Scout movies you may be interested in. Here they are, in order: Snuf de Hond in Oorlogstijd (2008) based on the book that, in English, was simply called Scout Snuf de hond en de jacht op vliegende Volckert (2008), based on Scout and the Flying Phantom Snuf De Hond en Het Spookslot (2010) which lines up loosely with Scout: the Haunted Castle Snuf de hond en de IJsvogel (2011), which I think is based on Scout: the Sailing Sleuths Our family has watched films 1 and 3, and really enjoyed both, even though we had to read the English subtitles throughout. We come from a Dutch heritage, so all these Dutch speakers sound very friendly and familiar.