A trippy hit
The first few minutes of this seem like something out of Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted. Adult language and situations with gangsters and drug use and circuses felt like it was going to spin out quickly and do its thing. Didn't help that I thought when initially watching it that I was getting ready to view a short film.However, it turns out to be quite the production in the long run. The English speaking voice cast is filled with stars and character actors, and the dialog is written by Simon Pegg. Fitting it into the Norwegian original is probably why it's a bit chatty at certain parts, and the movie is somewhat slow paced for what it's trying to be, but that has more to do with what was obviously a long process of animation. This movie doesn't come out to be as striking of an independent animation as something like Fritz the Cat, but by the time you're a good half hour into it you realize you're seeing something unlike any other.
Jimmy the Elephant is a drugged up dragged out old circus elephant addicted to the drugs they feed him to keep him trapped and performing, and unfortunately for him he becomes wanted by a wide array of sketch characters. There's the deadbeats lead by Arnie to work at the circus so that they can have access to a special package hidden in Jimmy's rump; bumbling animal's rights activists that end up killing more animals and making more speeches than effectively doing anything; Asian jester bike gang sent by the Russian mob to hunt down Arnie, only to find that Arnie's interest in Jimmy is even more valuable; and an angry fat hunter wanting a prize kill. Via various escapades they end up in the Moors and vie for a variety of positions very violent, resulting in mayhem. Poor Jimmy has to recover from his drug problem and survive in the wild in the middle of it.
It's the latter point where the movie gets a heart, a surprising one, but probably the thing that pulls the movie together the most. The rest is slapstick comedy and the adult humor can drag a bit at times (especially in the dialog) but suddenly when you see a moose befriend Jimmy and put him through recovery, you get this strangely wonderful, wonderfully absurd, and absurdly powerful recovery plot that sticks. The music is a little hokey, yeh, but the character animation and how they personify the characters of the moose and Jimmy is pitch perfect.
So, that only leaves the trouble of where the heck did this come from? An 80 minute animation from Norway with a story like that was not only a movie I didn't expect to stumble upon (currently it is playing for free on Mubi.com), less do I understand why I wouldn't have heard somethings about it. This is certainly currently an undiscovered gem--flawed, not exactly the best movie out there, but something different. Maybe star power behind the voice actors will bring it a little more attention.
--PolarisDiB
score 6/10
Polaris_DiB 1 June 2011
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2437116/35751
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