Espen : Le Gardien de la prophétie

They did a great job at building up the suspense in this movie! I'm glad they recorded it with English voice overs. Even if some of the lines seem like they were meant for the younger crowd I think it's a must-see. I don't mind the voice overs when the story is this good. It gives me hope that I can find other quality foreign movies that are re-recorded in English.

This is a very old fashioned fairy tale that has been banned for at least half a century, and probably an entire century, by the powers of Hollywood.

The censors didn't get to this one. It doesn't have the Hollywood formula of the usual hatefulness. This was written with love and wit.

It's very reminiscent of the better parts of Anderson and Grimm, without the Grimm racism.

It's very funny, and very entertaining, and thus hated by the Beavis and Butthead crowd that so often come here in this present age. Perhaps the day will come when that sort of hatefulness will be a minority instead of popular opinion.

This is how to make a film for the "non control freaks".

I've gone to the movies with my kids countless times to see children and family movies... fortunately this time it was something else. Our movie experience was great this time, the scenes are beautiful, the movie is funny at times and a little scary at times... bust most importantly, it kept us entertained from start to the end, and that is a very rare thing when this family goes to the movies :) I get easily bored at almost all children/family movies and unfortunately, so do the kids, as more or less all movies have a "downtime" that make them restless and sometimes even wanting to go home. Askeladden kept us at the edge of our seats the whole time, which is a very... very rare thing... well done! :)

I started watching this film assuming I'd move on to something else but was drawn in by the beautiful and unusual scenery (I'm not familiar with the landscape of Norway). The storyline wasn't especially original but contained enough elements of the "modern fantasy film" and a traditional fairy tale to be interesting. Modern elements included anachronistic dialogue and injections of somewhat juvenile humor. The traditional fairy tale elements included episodic encounters with supernatural beings and a series of seemingly useless items picked up by the main character that later come in handy. (There was one item I'd totally forgotten about until came into play at the end of the film in an important way.) I also liked how the brothers ended up working together to accomplish their mission and learned to see their seeming incompetent brother in a different light. The film isn't perfect of course. Some of the dialogue seemed a bit clunky (but I was watching a dubbed version....I have a feeling the dialogue worked better in Norwegian.) The special effects are not bad (though not as slick as some American films) and don't distract. Overall, enjoyable.

So, Norwegian critics have been pretty much butchering this movie. Which is a little strange. On the other hand, Norwegian movie critics don't typically like this kind of movie. No. Boring, dark, dramatic movies that no one (other than the critics) really wants to see, that's what they like! So when someone tries to make an entertaining movie, a movie that sort of breaks the mold, oh yeah, let's reign fire down upon it!

Anyway!

Askeladden (or Ash Lad as it is internationally) starts off really good. It looks great. I like the visual style. Very strong colors, (something critics have been complaining about), nice nature shots, some cool set pieces. I thought it suited the story very well.

It's very well paced, never boring. Has some actually pretty awesome scenes. There is especially one scene, or sequence that I just loved. It's really cool, and the rest of the movie can't quite keep up, because it's that cool. But that's my personal opinion of course.

The acting is decent for the most part. Some of the actors speak in a different dialect than they actually have, so for a language person like me, some lines are a little stiff. The script is not the best, but I don't think it's that important. This is a family movie, more for kids than adults, and I don't think the dialogue is that extremely important. (unlike other critics)

There are lots of references to different fairy tales, exactly what I wanted. There are also several effect shots, which I thought was pretty damn good. Maybe once or twice, it's not quite as good as it could have been, but that's a very minor issue.

I liked the first half or so the best, but all in all I was entertained. I hope this one does well in the theaters, because I want more!