The headline ‘Borsato is not quite toe-curling’, tops the NRC’s review of singer Marco Borsato’s acting debut in the film Wit Licht (White Light).

Borsato is one of the Netherlands’ most popular singers. He is also an ambassador for War Child and has enough clout to get this film about child soldiers in Africa financed. And to use it to show his acting skills.
Borsato plays a chef who braves the jungle to find his son’s friend. According to Trouw, the scenes of the kidnap and training of the boy soldiers are tense and moving, but ‘Borsato’s has the same expression whether a meal is late in his restaurant or a man is dying in his arms’.
Most of the papers are agreed the film is more of a promotional plea for War Child than a real feature film. And the Volkskrant points out the subject matter is hardly a Christmas film.
And all of the papers find Borsato the actor wanting. As AD puts it: ‘He would do better to keep singing.’