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4/12/2016

Dunderklumpen/Thundering Fatty/Dunder Klumpen/Dunderklumpen! (1974) - Åhlin's part-animated jabberwocky psych-out



Some of the key animated characters of Per Åhlin's Dunderklumpen against the picturesque, Swedish mountain landscape

QUICK REVIEW:

A boy in the Swedish wild country gets his toy magically turned to life by the fat, animated Dunderklumpen character, who then sails away with the boy and his father in tow.

Dunderklumpen is written by Beppe Wolgers (Ur En Kos Dagbok (1985)), adapting his own 1969 children's book, and directed by by Per Åhlin (Hundhotellet (2000)). It is a very 1970s-infused psychedelic piece of nonsense. SPOILER - Its climax is a didactic speech on how money is not something to strive for.
Most of the film is narratively highly eccentric, - Dunderklumpen or Thundering Fatty, which he has been named in some English versions, and his (seemingly) acid-affected friends talk to, among other things, a waterfall and a house, - or just plain bunk.
The mix of live action and animation in Dunderklumpen provides some fun and is fairly successful, and more than one of the film's music pieces are good. But overall I find the film very hard to stand.





Here's an English-language trailer for the movie

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Reportedly 5.8 mil. SEK (Sweden only)
= Unknown
[Dunderklumpen was released September 26 and runs 97 minutes. 552k people reportedly paid admission to the film in its native Sweden, which must have made it a local success, although it might still count as a flop theatrically. It is thought of as Sweden's first animated feature, although it is actually only partly animated. Åhlin won a Special Achievement award at the Guldbagge Awards (Swedish Oscar) for the film. It was released in 1977 in the US, Hungary, East Germany and the Netherlands. It was rereleased in 1999 in Germany, in 2013 in the Netherlands and in 2014 in Sweden. 1,216 users have given Dunderklumpen a 7.0 average rating on IMDb.]

What do you think of Dunderklumpen?
Any curious 1970s film/s that you find it hard to take?

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