In Crazy About Ya, different characters meet. Sometimes their stories are closely interwoven, sometimes they just brush past each other. But sooner or later everyone runs into the hero of this story, Saint Jan. As a true sanctus ex machina he makes sure that in the end, they are all a bit crazier about each other again.
A journalist is about to settle with his girlfriend when his life and views get shaken up by the young and beautiful Pakistani refugee Nadia. At work his ideals are more and more confronted with the harsh reality of modern urban society, while his flamboyant grandfather fights his last personal battle - a battle for his right to die.
Bennie, a clumsy criminal who's touchy about his weight, teams up with his adoptive father's biological (serial killer) son, his employees who in his absence turned his snack-bar into a quiche bakery, a suicidal manic-depressive woman and a Yugoslavian who keeps blowing things up unintended. They need to get 300000 Euro to get Bennies father a new liver.
A man with bloody hands is arrested as prime suspect in a murder case. He does not understand why and refuses to cooperate. Bernard Van de Wiele, the suspect, is a writer. One of the police inspectors comes up with the idea to give him a typewriter: an Olivetti 82. The interrogators hope that this way he will agree to share his story. Bernard begins his memoir: a long search for love and protection. Little by little the truth comes to light.
André Mahy, an artistic but unemployed director, gets an offer to make a movie, the script of which appears to be a 'Kiekeboe' comic story entitled Misstakes. A fascinating dialogue develops between the fictional story of the family Kiekeboe and the real story of André Mahy and his film crew.
Sammy Raes, a nice, naive law-freshman from a simple family, dies in a form of hazing known as the 'flying carpet'. The father of the arrogant fraternity president Guy Bogaerts who ordered this reckless procedure abuses his connections to prevent a judicial homicide conviction, while the college authorities prefer to avoid a scandal in the press. However Sammy's freshmen friends Tom Smits and Denn
Antwerp in the fifties. Robin de Hert grew up in a Catholic parochial environment; on the one hand there is his authoritarian father and the sadistic secretary of the Catholic boys technical school, on the other hand there are the 'Grieten' and the French teacher with whom Robin is getting a good band through a secret they share. If the secretary finds out about this secret, this has major implications for both the teacher and the students ...
The movie made after the hit series "De Kollega's" starring the same characters, but rather tragicomic. When November 11, an official holiday (Armistice), falls on a Tuesday, the public service often gets an extra day off on the preceding Monday, but only after a formal ministerial decision, and this time it gets all the way trough the hierarchy to the right office- and then isn't read, so all the colleagues turn up, only to be told they should have stayed at home. It gets worse: works in progress and clumsiness end up blocking the way out both by lift and staircase, so they are stuck on their floor, apparently without a phone, while there's nobody outside who can hear and rescue them. Forced to keep their conversation going, some secrets get unearthed, and it's not a very pretty picture they got of each-other.
The second movie version, now in color, of Flemish (heimat-)author Ernest Claes' classical novel, titled after the nickname (Dutch 'the White', referring to a blond male) of the main character. The smart but naughty farmhands son's eternal mischief, pranks and disobedience drive his elders (especially teachers, family and father's grumpy employer, a rich farmer, but also neighbors and even the kind curate whose liturgical server he is) and classmates to despair in a time when a boy's punishment was still inevitable, swift and often severe; thus when his mother catches him skinny dipping she takes all his clothes home, forcing him to a long walk of shame, dreading dad's wrath all the way. This version also stresses the story's social and Flamingant aspects.