
On a short holiday, Sherina and her family was invited by her father’s boss, Adriwilaga (Didi Petet) to his villa, Sherina found herself face to face with her sworn enemy.

She arrive in a new school and was taunted by the naughty boy in her class, Sadam (Derby Romero), who teased her mercilessly. Sherina (Sherina Munaf), a 10 year old girl must leave her friends and everything she knew in Jakarta, when his father job force the family to relocate to Bandung. The ensemble of casts are insane, because they were big names, even legendary, and everyone here actually a great actor respectively. The story line been done repeatedly, but still the standard formulaic plot was a people pleaser anyway. The musical angle of course become a huge success factor and it was beautifully scored by Elfa Secioria, resulted in a simultaneous release of soundtrack/Sherina’s album. It features a young singer, who were a prodigy at that time, Sherina Munaf. It was a lovely combination that packed quite a punch as a family film. Petualangan Sherina was a breath of fresh air for Indonesian Film. Even though there were hollywood films playing, families went to the theater to see Sherina, a phenomenon that never happen before in my eyes. There was only one movie theater chain back then, but some stand-alone theater are still available here and there.

One of the turning point of Indonesian Film came in 2000, when a children singer, Sherina Munaf appeared as the title character in a musical/adventure feature film for family, Petualangan Sherina ( Sherina’s Adventure).

Mind you, back then our TV have decent soap operas, there’s a huge quality gap to the ones being broadcasted nowadays. So growing up in the 90s i did not remember ever seeing a lot of Indonesian Film in movie theatre, instead i saw reruns of Suzanna horror films, slapstick comedy a la three stooges by Warkop (aka Dono Kasino Indro), or day time soap opera on TV. The last Indonesian film that gain international recognition was 1988’s Tjoet Nja Dhien which was actually the first Indonesian film screened at 1989 Cannes Film Festival and won the best International Film award.

Indonesian film was steadily declining back in the 90s.
