Let me just let Alvaro Passeri tell you what this movie is about.
"It's Christmas Eve and the snow is falling gently all around a log cabin. This is the home of Mary. Who lives here with her family. She has a serious case of flu and is lying in bed with a very high temperature. Gathered around her is Kevin her young brother. Her mother Nancy and her grandfather. Kevin opens the Christmas gifts and finds a book called The Golden Grain He starts to read it. Out in distant space, the Little People's Castle is threatened by the Black Fortress. Ruled by Makeb. The king of the castle calls the Queen of Hope for help. Her name is Jade and when she reaches the Fortress she gets drawn into a dangerous computer game with Makeb. She is attacked on all sides by huge balls of fire. Slashing swords. Laser rags and a terrible monster. Back at Mary's house. Jethro, a nasty neighbor, is trying to take the place of Nancy's husband who is missing, presumed dead. When the game comes to an end Makeb plays the Joker and a flood sweeps Jade away. At the same time Mary's heart stops beating! Then Jade reappears again alive and well. The death ray hits Makeb. Whose mask falls off to reveal the face of Jethro. Jade triumphantly reaches the Castle of the Little People and is presented with a grain of corn as her reward. Which begins to glow in the palm of her hand. She throws it and it lands by Mary's cabin. Suddenly cured. She leaps out of bed. Ripping off the scarf around her head, to reveal the face of Jade! At that moment the door opens and Mary's father comes in. Having escaped from a mine he had been trapped in for weeks. At midnight the family gathers around the fire. Happy and united once again. It's going to be a happy Christmas."
This is literally the description of the movie and it gives most of the film away.
Let me tell you something.
You could be told word for word everything that happens in this movie and in no way will you be ready for it.
This is The NeverEnding Story that I had hoped that movie would be when I saw the trailer as a kid. Alvaro Passeri is the closest director that I've ever seen to Luigi Cozzi at his wildest. This is also very The Princess Bride if that movie also had a Satanic figure whose face looks like he came directly out of Ron Ormond's The Burning Hell.
The first of Passeri's films I saw was The Mummy Theme Park and this delivers the same delirious world of gigantic factories filled with tiny rooms of drones, all creating death machines, all preparing to fire mind cannons at the Queen of Hope. Yet these are all human beings inside those cubicles from Hell, all moving and living and breathing.
There are puppet people, there's an entire bar filled with skeletons - and the dog hero also bites one of the leg bones and runs with it - and so much charm. This is a movie that I have run through my head again and again, way more often than movies with budgets thirty times more.
A video game puppet stop motion Christmas movie with an alternate reality inside a book that brings you back to a potential snowbound tragedy. All of Passeri's movies have a sense of childlike wonder, but they often have eyeballs getting torn out and bodies being destroyed. This one is kid-friendly, even if it might be the oddest movie your children ever see.
"It's Christmas Eve and the snow is falling gently all around a log cabin. This is the home of Mary. Who lives here with her family. She has a serious case of flu and is lying in bed with a very high temperature. Gathered around her is Kevin her young brother. Her mother Nancy and her grandfather. Kevin opens the Christmas gifts and finds a book called The Golden Grain He starts to read it. Out in distant space, the Little People's Castle is threatened by the Black Fortress. Ruled by Makeb. The king of the castle calls the Queen of Hope for help. Her name is Jade and when she reaches the Fortress she gets drawn into a dangerous computer game with Makeb. She is attacked on all sides by huge balls of fire. Slashing swords. Laser rags and a terrible monster. Back at Mary's house. Jethro, a nasty neighbor, is trying to take the place of Nancy's husband who is missing, presumed dead. When the game comes to an end Makeb plays the Joker and a flood sweeps Jade away. At the same time Mary's heart stops beating! Then Jade reappears again alive and well. The death ray hits Makeb. Whose mask falls off to reveal the face of Jethro. Jade triumphantly reaches the Castle of the Little People and is presented with a grain of corn as her reward. Which begins to glow in the palm of her hand. She throws it and it lands by Mary's cabin. Suddenly cured. She leaps out of bed. Ripping off the scarf around her head, to reveal the face of Jade! At that moment the door opens and Mary's father comes in. Having escaped from a mine he had been trapped in for weeks. At midnight the family gathers around the fire. Happy and united once again. It's going to be a happy Christmas."
This is literally the description of the movie and it gives most of the film away.
Let me tell you something.
You could be told word for word everything that happens in this movie and in no way will you be ready for it.
This is The NeverEnding Story that I had hoped that movie would be when I saw the trailer as a kid. Alvaro Passeri is the closest director that I've ever seen to Luigi Cozzi at his wildest. This is also very The Princess Bride if that movie also had a Satanic figure whose face looks like he came directly out of Ron Ormond's The Burning Hell.
The first of Passeri's films I saw was The Mummy Theme Park and this delivers the same delirious world of gigantic factories filled with tiny rooms of drones, all creating death machines, all preparing to fire mind cannons at the Queen of Hope. Yet these are all human beings inside those cubicles from Hell, all moving and living and breathing.
There are puppet people, there's an entire bar filled with skeletons - and the dog hero also bites one of the leg bones and runs with it - and so much charm. This is a movie that I have run through my head again and again, way more often than movies with budgets thirty times more.
A video game puppet stop motion Christmas movie with an alternate reality inside a book that brings you back to a potential snowbound tragedy. All of Passeri's movies have a sense of childlike wonder, but they often have eyeballs getting torn out and bodies being destroyed. This one is kid-friendly, even if it might be the oddest movie your children ever see.
