| Miss Minoes | |
| Director: | Vincent Bal |
| Producer: | Burny Bos |
| Screenplay: |
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| Music: | Peter Vermeersch |
| Cinematography: | Walther van den Ende |
| Editing: | Peter Alderliesten |
| Studio: | |
| Distributor: | |
| Runtime: | 86 minutes |
| Country: | Netherlands |
| Language: | Dutch |
| Gross: | $4,772,773[1] [2] |
Miss Minoes[3] (Dutch; Flemish: '''Minoes''') is a 2001 Dutch film directed by Vincent Bal and produced by Burny Bos, based on the Dutch children's novel Minoes by Annie M.G. Schmidt. The film stars Theo Maassen and Carice van Houten as the titular character. The film won the Golden Calves for Best Feature Film and Best Actress.[4]
One night, a cat named Minoes stumbles upon a can of chemical liquid dropped by a truck, and after drinking it transforms into a human woman. As a human, she maintains her feline traits such as her fear of dogs, meowing on the roof with other cats, catching mice, purring, and eating raw fish. She soon meets a journalist named Tibbe, who works for the newspaper of the fictional town of Killendoorn.
Tibbe is very shy, and therefore he finds it quite hard to write good articles. At first, Tibbe does not believe she is a cat in human form, but Minoes happens to know all kinds of interesting news from the town cats, so it doesn't bother him. In exchange for food and shelter, Tibbe allows Minoes to help him with his journalist job by finding interesting news to write about. With the help of the Cat Press Service and all the news the cats bring in, Tibbe soon becomes the journalist with the best articles.
However, there is one important article that Tibbe does not dare to write: an article on the rich Mr. Ellemeet, the chemical factory owner. All town members consider him a respectable man, and a real animal lover. But all cats know that he is not what he seems. After Minoes finally convinces Tibbe to write and publish the article, the whole town turns its back on him. He loses his job and is almost evicted from his apartment. However, Minoes helps set up a sting in which Ellemeet is filmed shooting at cats and exposed as the cruel villain he is. In the end, although Minoes has a chance to turn back into a cat by eating a bullfinch (which supposedly eats herbs that can cure many conditions such as that of a cat turning into a human), she decides to remain human and stay with Tibbe, having fallen in love with him. The film's credits reveal that the two got married.
The film was released on December 6, 2001, in the Netherlands by Warner Bros. Pictures under their Family Entertainment label. It was a box office success, grossing $4,227,362 in the Netherlands, $111,858 in Germany, $34,164 in Austria, and $389,200 in Norway. Music Box Films released an English dubbed version under the title Miss Minoes on 23 December 2011[5] in New York City[6] and Chicago.