4/09/2019

Fuglekrigen i Kanøfleskoven (1990) or, Every Bird for Himself

♥♥♥

Birds in a dark environment play music and dance (with rats), while an ominous vulture readies to feed on them on this poster for Jannik Hastrup's Fuglekrigen i Kanøfleskoven

A young bird in the forest called Oliver gets a good friend and later girlfriend in fellow bird Olivia, and they stage a united front against the vulture tyrant of the forest, Fagin. - But precious few will help them.

Fuglekrigen i Kanøfleskoven is written by Bent Haller (Dreaming of Paradise/Strit og Stumme (1987)), based on his own children's book Fuglekrigen (1979), and directed by great Danish filmmaker Jannik Hastrup (Sandheden (1964)). The original Danish title translates to, 'the bird war in the reproach forest'.
It is a fairly typical Haller-Hastrup collaboration, which pushes the view that people are stupid and ignorant, and that adults aren't much help but are often selfish and/or downright malicious.
Two mice from Hastrup's popular Cirkeline (1967-70) animation get dragged into the story, and this is one of those films were developments seem to be invented primarily as a means to boost the running time.
Tommy Kenter's (Chop Chop/Fukssvansen (2001)) voice performance as the owl, which was inspired by W.C. Fields, is one of the best things in the film, but Ove Sprogøe (Kurt og Valde (1983)) and Anne Marie Helger (Jungledyret Hugo (2003, TV-series)) as the two magpies are also funny.
Fuglekrigen i Kanøfleskoven is singular and out-spoken but in no way deep or inspired exactly, and the animation isn't beautiful or original.



Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 12 mil. DKK, approximately 2 mil. $
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertain
[Fuglekrigen i Kanøfleskoven was released 28 September (Denmark) and runs 68 minutes. No box office information is made available, regrettably, though the Danish Film Institute, (one of the production companies behind the film), called it a "big audience success" in its primary production company Denmark, and also inform that the film was distributed with 80 and 40 copies made, respectively, for the German and French market. The film was also released in Iceland, Sweden, Japan, Finland and the Netherlands. It won the Best Film for the Youth award in Cannes 1990. 30 seconds of profanity was cut out for a North-American release of the film, which never came to fruition. It won a Robert award (Denmark's Oscar) for Best Sound. Hastrup returned with 3 shorts and theatrically with Aberne og det Hemmelige Våben (1995). 711 IMDb users have given Fuglekrigen i Kanøfleskoven a 7.3/10 average rating.]

What do you think of Fuglekrigen i Kanøfleskoven?

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