cartman_1337

So, the theatrical version was bad, and Snyder blamed it on the studio's demand that the movie shouldn't be more than 2 hours long. But, after fan pressure, the studio gave in and let Snyder release his preferred version. And it's just as bad, just more of it.

But honestly, inside this bad movie there seems to be a middling movie trying to escape. If he had skipped all the slow motion, the action sequences 1: wouldn't feel so ridiculous, and 2: the movie would have been at least one hour shorter with that move alone. Then, cutting a couple of unnecessary scenes, which there are several of, he could have released pretty much this version in just over 2 hours, and I guarantee that it would have felt better than this slow-mo mess. It would by no means be great, but at least far less bad.

This movie is said to be the first Norwegian animated movie. There's just a problem; it's not animated! Animation means drawings in motion on the screen. This movie does not have that. So what exactly is it? Using the broadest possible definition of it, I suppose you could call it a documentary. A documentary about a man drawing a chalk drawing of a figure we base on the title of the movie must assume is supposed to be Roald Amundsen on an empty blackboard, using a very rough caricature of Earth (the globe) as his body. The globe has both the North and South pole on it, and there's no distinction made as to which exactly is the focus point in the drawing, so the "on the South Pole" part of the title makes no sense at all. The drawing is not animated - it does not move, so calling this animation is complete nonsense as well. If this was a definition of animation, then any live action movie you've ever watched where someone draws a caricature on a piece of paper, a napkin, a blackboard, in the sand, or whatever, should be characterized as animation too...

If watching amateur artists drawing crude, nonsensical drawings of Norwegian legends on a blackboard sounds like your thing, then by all means seek it out - it's out on Blu-ray in Norway now (along with several other Norwegian animated shorts, most of which far more worthwhile than this). My best advise is to skip it completely. It's not animation, it's not entertaining and it's not the least bit interesting. Quite possibly the worst Norwegian movie I've ever watched. Utter nonsense!