Slipp Jimmy Fri

Fritz the cat was one of the first 2D-animated cartoons for adults. Over twenty years later comes the first adult 3D-animated film. (For those of you who didn't already knew it, Nielsen is actually a big fan of Crumb)This is a film I've been waiting on for several years now. And I must say it was defiantly worth the wait. Director/writer Nielsen's film is controversial, tragic, violent and very funny. One of the best things of the film is the "ugly details" such as cracks on the walls, unclean skin, unshaved faces, blood shot eyes, rust marks on the cars etc. I also love the character designs, some of them have already appeared in Nielsen's comic books(Like the drug-users and the hunters) while there are some new ones as well. But all of them have a individual look and behavior and offers plenty of good lines and jokes. It would've been funny to see a sequel, but I highly doubt it will ever happen considering how much trouble and problems the filmmakers went through in order to finish this one.

The problem with modern animation is that the first observations from commentors seem to be about the quality of the animation. It distracts, at least when the film is big budget.

The advantage of this sort of animation for me is that the filmmaker can go further into the extreme, can be more dramatic and large, more risky and imaginative, than the limits of humans and cameras allows. This film means more to me on that account than any of the Pixar projects, and I admire them greatly. But at the end of the day with them, they leave you were they found you, except for their experiments with depth and space.

this instead tries for something deeper, something that matters, the stuff that justifies theater.

The basic spine of this is the filmmaker's brother. He was a performer killed by drugs, like the titular Jimmy. Often violent and pitiful, once you know this fact, the portrayal of the elephant is pretty heartwrenching. Overlayed on it is a vehicle for Nordic humor: stuff an American audience will miss, both because the jokes are beyond us and because the English script is different. There are some engaging episodes here: funny, disgusting, poignant. They are the means used for transporting us, the tricks used to convince us into collaborating on maintaining an alternative world.

Its that world that works for me. Its a mix of the previously mentioned extremes plus three traditional forms. Its a conventional tragedy. Everything grinds toward the inevitable. But its a noir too. There are incredible coincidences brought on by the mechanism of watching. Its a closed world that produces unlikely twists and that captures people in a fate that is for our amusement. And it is folded. Usual folds are simple, with one viewer mechanism. Here there are many viewing agents, each one controlling some element of the noir (except the Norweigians, a joke). Hunters, Laplanders, some Russian circus punks, some animal rights terrorists, and a Moose.

All of these three: tragedy, viewer-incited noir and observer-folding reinforce the story of the lost brother.

This works. Its worthy.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

I have to admit I needed about 15 minutes to get used to the style of this animation. I like that for a change we get to see something different than your average Pixar happy ending movies (which is also nice, but it needed balancing out).It reminds me a little of the short movie "Fallen Art" which to me is brilliant. To draw a comparison with Pixar: Pixar always succeeds in getting the audience to love or hate their characters and feel for them. This team did a good job with Jimmy and I just want to adopt him. For me that makes a good movie. The movies contains a bit of humor (however black it may be) and it makes this entertaining if you take to time to get past the first 15 minutes. Like the graphics and characters set up.

Many nice stories and ideas here. Like the sami/lapp mafia, the elephant on drugs, the straight edge activists, etc. Problem is, it is all cramped together on too little time.

In almost every situation in the film, there's a guy talking, someone talking/whining in the background, and then there's some additional sound effect. This adds to the general feeling of lack of focus I'm going to talk more about below.

The underground cartoon this animation is based on, is GREAT, and one of the things it does best is character building. Actually, in my opinion, the cartoon has the best character building I have ever seen in any medium; book, film etc. This film however, is the opposite of that. Most of the lines seem rushed, both from the manuscript side, and from the dubbing actors side. I agree with another commenter here, both me and my girlfriend wanted to watch it in English in stead. The norwegian dubbing is just half-hearted and most actors don't attempt to find and build up the characters at all. Just reading lines and making voices.

As for the CG, some of it is great (the rocky brown autumn nature for instance), some of it not so good. What fails is mostly lighting and animations/dynamics. Some of the coolest graphics in the film are Christopher Nielsens own (hand drawn) animations.

I like the "untraditional" story curves a lot myself, problem is, this never finds a story curve of it's own either. It just stumbles past you, the scenes don't find their "form" in any way. The humor could also be better. It is really funny at one or two occasions.

As a general observation, "Free Jimmy" just left me feeling empty (?) and half annoyed. It felt unprofessional and just badly put together, radiating a lack of experience high up in the production hierarchy. On too many occasions, you can see through the seams of the movie, so to speak. And when people die, in stead of feeling something, you kinda go "eh, what was the point of that".

Luckily, "Free Jimmy" doesn't annoy everyone, especially when people pick this up as an unknown/underground production in some video store, in stead of watching it as a hyped up "expensive" film. I'm glad people are enjoying it and that the producers are getting money for this. For me, it was half disappointing.. just as it was half everything else.

The story's about the life of a junkie circus elephant and the filth of the human society who want to make money off him.

The movie is quite sad and will bring out emotions in the viewer which are normally not associated with animation. Animation does seem to be the right medium for this real-life inspired tragedy.

Its a tribute from the director to a brother who lost his life to drugs. Obviously once one knows the history this movie is borne out of, it becomes easier to appreciate the story.

Joachim Nielsen, rest in peace. If you are up there watching this, i hope you enjoyed it as much as i did.