Based on a 1960s Dutch television series, this delightful musical comedy chronicles the lives of a group of tenants in a guesthouse filled with eccentrics. The movie's plot involves at least three romances, a threatened eviction, a series of robberies, and a pill that change personalities from bad to good. One romantic interlude includes a muscular thief in his underwear singing on the rooftop to his pet pigeons. All the inhabitants of the guesthouse are very cheerful and good-hearted people whose open communal lifestyle is contrasted with the life of the nasty and complaining neighbour Mr. Boordevool (Paul Kooij). He has spent ages looking for a way to close the guesthouse. One day a girl from the the guesthouse meets young hunky Gerrit (Waldemar Torenstra), a bleached-blond burglar with a heart of gold. Sister Klivia (Loes Luca) lets Gerrit stay even though he is a thief. Mr. Boordevool thinks this is his chance to have his neighbours evicted. When a flamboyantly gay hairdresser opens up a shop across the street, the plot takes a number of queer twists as both Boordevool and the neighborhood begin to change. The gay plot may be small, but the gay sensibility is overwhelming in this campy motion picture.
"Ja Zuster, Nee Zuster" is a colorful 1960s movie world where the streets are filled with singing and dancing, carnivals come to town, and everyone's problem is the mean old nasty neighbor. It's hilarious camp fun and unusual in that it doesn't take itself seriously. Raymund van Santen composed the original music. Harry Bannink, Frank Houtappels, and Pieter Kramer wrote the screenplay from the story by Annie M. G. Schmidt. Pieter Kramer directed. The English title is "Yes Nurse, No Nurse". In Dutch, with English subtitles.
