Free Jimmy

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.

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.

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.

I would be wasting my time and breath on explaining the trouble with critic reviews. This film was described as "insufficiently funny" -- I am not sure why it is listed as a comedy, but it is certainly not one. With that said; this movie is FANTASTIC! It has funny moments in the sick and twisted fashion of life handing you lemons, however, it is beautifully and deliciously dark and twisted. VERY DARK, VERY WELL WRITTEN AND DIRECTED. Is this film for kids? NO. Is this film for teenagers, adults, and fans of good movies? YES! I hope this film finds it's English speaking market. I think the fans will love this film and I that one day it will reach the cult status it deserves. Great job!!

Some of you who have commented on this movie obviously don't know the background for this movie. Christopher Nielsen who made this movie is brother of one of the most known dead punk rock stars in Norway, Joakim Nielsen. Who played in Jokke & Valentinerne, which is one of the most influential band in Norwegian punk.! And this movie is in a way Christophers' feelings, about how he feel how Joakims' life went. The way showbiz "drugged" Joakim(jimmy), so he would shut up and earn them some money. And most of the animated characters in the movie are ego's of people in the real life who were around Jokke. But i have to admit that a lot of the humor in this movie is directed to Norwegian viewers.