My god.. This movie is so weak. First of all - not a cartoon for kids, if you didn't read/know that already. I've never done a review before but given the high grade here, I've decided to have a swing at it and sorry if it's all over the place.
The story isn't anything new and probably anything new wasn't needed - you can still have good fun with a basic story as told in the plot summary above.. but the movie just doesn't have or do anything with it. The writing is so boring and infantile, not even jackass-funny infantile, mind you. Just your some-kids-learned-some-new-curse-words infantile. It tries so hard to be funny and it shows. No adult jokes, just adult language. That's the comedy here and all it really accomplishes is that you can't show the cartoon to your kids (also a little dash of violence). It cheapens it as if the movie wasn't handicapped enough with the hack writing. The characters are forgettable or just boring and at times just so stupid it's just plain annoying (well, the bard in particular).
Since it's a Denmark flick, the original language was probably Danish (I assume) and the dub over wasn't lip-synced, which is not the end of the world, but still - a minor annoyance. Another thing about the dub.. is it me or does nobody there in the dub give a damn about the roles or is it just how the script was written, or is it that just nobody in the movie was really anybody (again referring that most of them are not really memorable)? I mean, even in Disney's, Pixar's or Dreamwork's films you can at least enjoy the acting, the characters are animated and you, whilst still watching essentially a movie for kids, can still sit through it and maybe even be entertained.
It's around 87 minutes, but for some reason doesn't seem long whilst being overall boring and unfunny, so that could be a sort of a plus (?). It COULD'VE been a passable kid-flick, because the animation is pretty good .. well, not putting the big budget companies to shame as other reviewers say here, but solid (and by the many overly positive reviews, you'd think, the directors and actors gave themselves a pat on the back for this "stellar job"). It'd be a solid kid flick if you'd cut out the adult themes, but it's not. Because it didn't. Because the adult theme appears to be added by kids who are still giddy about the new naughty words they learned and the weak slapstick comedy they added few and far between to remember or take notice. (Or maybe there's a good heft of comedy lost in translation, but I doubt it)
So in short - watch something else.
The story isn't anything new and probably anything new wasn't needed - you can still have good fun with a basic story as told in the plot summary above.. but the movie just doesn't have or do anything with it. The writing is so boring and infantile, not even jackass-funny infantile, mind you. Just your some-kids-learned-some-new-curse-words infantile. It tries so hard to be funny and it shows. No adult jokes, just adult language. That's the comedy here and all it really accomplishes is that you can't show the cartoon to your kids (also a little dash of violence). It cheapens it as if the movie wasn't handicapped enough with the hack writing. The characters are forgettable or just boring and at times just so stupid it's just plain annoying (well, the bard in particular).
Since it's a Denmark flick, the original language was probably Danish (I assume) and the dub over wasn't lip-synced, which is not the end of the world, but still - a minor annoyance. Another thing about the dub.. is it me or does nobody there in the dub give a damn about the roles or is it just how the script was written, or is it that just nobody in the movie was really anybody (again referring that most of them are not really memorable)? I mean, even in Disney's, Pixar's or Dreamwork's films you can at least enjoy the acting, the characters are animated and you, whilst still watching essentially a movie for kids, can still sit through it and maybe even be entertained.
It's around 87 minutes, but for some reason doesn't seem long whilst being overall boring and unfunny, so that could be a sort of a plus (?). It COULD'VE been a passable kid-flick, because the animation is pretty good .. well, not putting the big budget companies to shame as other reviewers say here, but solid (and by the many overly positive reviews, you'd think, the directors and actors gave themselves a pat on the back for this "stellar job"). It'd be a solid kid flick if you'd cut out the adult themes, but it's not. Because it didn't. Because the adult theme appears to be added by kids who are still giddy about the new naughty words they learned and the weak slapstick comedy they added few and far between to remember or take notice. (Or maybe there's a good heft of comedy lost in translation, but I doubt it)
So in short - watch something else.