SIFF 2012 #2: Legends of Valhalla:Thor
Today's offering, an Icelandic 3-D CGI kids' film, Legends of Valhalla:Thor, was a charming little diversion.
The village blacksmith is a single mother to a gawky, awkward redhead named Thor, whom she claims is the son of the god Odin (the villagers have accepted this in exchange for the notion that Odin protects them specially). Thor of course, like most teens, would rather not help mom at the smithy, but be a warrior. Only problem is he mostly sucks at that. Meanwhile, Valhalla is thrown into disarray by the arrival of a new weapon, Crusher, made by a... well, he says he's not an elf or dwarf or sprite, named Sindri.
One of the joys of this film is the amount of Norse myth that actually made it into this. Odin's eye, the name of "Mjolnir" (which of course means Crusher), the goats, the ravens.. it's rather well done. And while the visual style might remind one of "Shrek", it's blissfully free of winking pop culture references (not that it's not rife with anachronisms, but that's another and entirely forgivable matter). The animation is bright and colorful, as is the tone. The 3-D worked quite well, and neither it nor the English language soundtrack gave me a headache (bad dubbing usually does).
There may not be much doubt about the destination, but the journey there was fun.
The village blacksmith is a single mother to a gawky, awkward redhead named Thor, whom she claims is the son of the god Odin (the villagers have accepted this in exchange for the notion that Odin protects them specially). Thor of course, like most teens, would rather not help mom at the smithy, but be a warrior. Only problem is he mostly sucks at that. Meanwhile, Valhalla is thrown into disarray by the arrival of a new weapon, Crusher, made by a... well, he says he's not an elf or dwarf or sprite, named Sindri.
One of the joys of this film is the amount of Norse myth that actually made it into this. Odin's eye, the name of "Mjolnir" (which of course means Crusher), the goats, the ravens.. it's rather well done. And while the visual style might remind one of "Shrek", it's blissfully free of winking pop culture references (not that it's not rife with anachronisms, but that's another and entirely forgivable matter). The animation is bright and colorful, as is the tone. The 3-D worked quite well, and neither it nor the English language soundtrack gave me a headache (bad dubbing usually does).
There may not be much doubt about the destination, but the journey there was fun.