Kjell Aukrust was a Norwegian humourous author who created his own thoroughly Norwegian universe with odd characters from all over the country, all of them appearing in pages of an imaginary small-town newspaper in various news stories or letters to the editor. The characters were mostly depicted in absurd situations, where much of the absurdity depended upon whether you had a knowledge of what was not being expressed explicitly. Aukrust both wrote and illustrated the small stories and incidents. The small-town newspaper was called Flåklypa Tidende (Flåklypa Times) and was collected in bestselling volumes, and the hugely succesful animated doll movie Flåklypa Grand Prix was based upon these characters, especially the bicycle repairman and inventor Reodor Felgen, and the two anthropomorph sidemen Solan Gundersen, a smug crow, and Ludvig (Louis), a timid hedgehog.
Aukrust had written and illustrated several half-humourous half-thoughtful books on Solan and Ludvig, and had his first book for children: Gurin with the fox tail, published in 1991, where Gurin was a barn gnome. Such gnomes are common in Scandinavian folklore, and they live on farms, though without any gnome society nor any treasures to guard. This movie is loosely based upon that book and other Flåklypa characters. There are thus a lot of inside jokes running through the whole film and Aukrust's tremendous drawings were used as a basis for the backgrounds and animation. The movie borrows slightly from situations in older Disney animated features.
Sadly, though, the movie does not work at all. The dialogue is contrived, using a lot of hard-to-understand dialects when the odd local people are talking, and the bigtown widow who is going on a search for the foxtail speaks with such an upper-class nasal accent that she replaces the letter 'l' with the letter 'n'. The characters all have their idiosyncratic speech, which is meant to be part of the fun, but in this movie it simply falls flat. Even when knowing the Flåklypa universe and Norwegian dialects thoroughly, the dialogue is hard to follow.
It seems the filmmakers wanted to depict Solan Gundersen as a sort of Philip Marlowe private detective. He is smoking a cigar and drinking cognac, the focus on which makes one wonder whether this is a movie for children or for adults with strong opinions on what children's movies ought to contain. Solan even has a nude calendar on the wall behind his desk, shown several times, of no value for the story. Neither has his visit to the Oslo landmark the Theater Café anything to do with the story. This was the hangout for famous Norwegian authors, poets, musicians and actors since 1900. Solan leaves without paying for his cigars and drinks and poor Ludvig is made to pay, a situation which is one of several disgusting scenes in the movie.
In Flåklypa Grand Prix, Solan and Ludvig became a great pair of helpers to the main character Reodor Felgen. In this movie, they do not carry the story well; Solan is made more egotistical and Ludvig more timid and downtrodden, to the point that he is shown writing to Social Security for payment.
The story, however, is thin and drawn out to fit the full-length feature requirements. It is set in the Norwegian inland at wintertime; the ground is covered by snow and it is very cold even by Norwegian standards. Gurin the barn gnome is childishly mischievous and therefore, one night, he grows a huge fox tail. He wants to get rid of it, but to no avail. In Oslo, the rich widow wants the fox tail and tries to employ Solan, but he refuses and goes on a chase for the tail himself. The rich widow employs a pest controller to chase them, the pest controller previously having been the main race car driver besides Reodor Felgen in Flåklypa Grand Prix.
The movie is full of the usual animation gags, like the car chase in the Norwegian scenery and an amount of characters climbing up on something and then falling down. The gnome is a sort of ten-year-old boy, so of course he finds the maid of the farm is making pastries and he eats them all up. The maid catches him, and there is no reaction at all; she just looks at him. Such inconsequential situations appear throughout the move. Various other situations seem to have been inserted in order to prolong the movie, like when the pest inspector has arrived at some local bus stop shed and is asking for information. Three old strange characters utter inexplicable grunts while smoking furiously. On the wall behind them one can see the however beautiful photograph of an old advertisement of a young girl smoking and smiling. It makes one wonder whether the movie was made as an answer to the official ban on smoking in public places at the time.
What all these situations have in common is simply that they are not funny. The timing in the movie is simply horrible, as so many situations are stretched before any point is being made. You feel sorry for Ludvig who has to pay Solan's bills, but Solan is never held accountable. The movie ends happily, though, as Gurin loses the fox tail after it has saved all the characters from the cold.
The movie has received more than one star because of the scenery and because of the bewilderment while watching. It was pretty unbelievable to watch it. We kept asking ourselves questions about pretty much everything we were watching. I will not recommend it for children, but if grown-ups are forewarned, they may get a good laugh out of it, and if they are not forewarned, we who have watched it already may get a good laugh out of their puzzlement.
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