Another example of questionable kid movie madness from the eighties. Emerging from Denmark, DREAMING OF PARADISE (STRIT OG STUMME; 1987) is a curious but appropriate addition to a decade that gave us THE BLACK CAULDRON, RETURN TO OZ and PINOCCHIO AND THE EMPEROR OF THE NIGHT, being a dark-hued post-apocalyptic themed cartoon.
The co-writer and director was Jannik Hastrup, the “grand old man” of Danish animation. The socialist-minded Hastrup has been active since the early 1960s, with over 40 animated films to his credit, among them the late 1960s anti-American short ESCAPE FROM AMERICA/FLUGTEN FRA AMERIKA, which was (and remains) banned by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. DREAMING OF PARADISE preceded Hastrup’s alleged 1990 masterpiece WAR OF THE BIRDS/FUGLEKRIGEN I KANOFLESKOVEN. DREAMING OF PARADISE, by contrast, probably isn’t anyone’s idea of a masterpiece, although it is a standout in its field.
In this film’s nightmarish reality pollution has rendered the earth uninhabitable. The surviving humans (who are nearly all bald headed and grey skinned) take refuge in underground caves, where they create an elaborate mythology involving a giant snake and a bird savior.
Meanwhile a plucky little boy named Strit (the only one of his fellows with a full head of hair) collects worms as food for his grandmother, and gets chased around by human-sized rats. These very Mickey Mouse-like rats (a resemblance, I’m certain, that was fully intentional on the part of Hastrup) have formed themselves into a paramilitary outfit run by a sombrero-wearing Yosemite Sam wannabe. This scumbag uses human children as slave labor, with his primary aim being to steal the humans’ dreams.
Yet Strit, his mute pal Summe and his fellows figure out a way to stymie the rats: by giving them mushrooms to eat, which make them inebriated. But when the underground lava river that heats this subterranean realm begins to rise, Strit and his fellows, following the dictates of their self-created mythology, elect to make their way to the surface.
The animation here is of the old school hand-drawn variety. Quality-wise it’s about average for its type, but with an artful and even poetic air. Great attention is payed to color and shading, with some gorgeously rendered images, among them a hallucinatory depiction of the film’s mythology via animated etchings on cave walls. The borderline avant-garde jazz score (by the prolific Danish composer Fuzzy) is another unexpected but spirited highlight.
On the downside, the silly banter of the rats falls flat, and has the effect of lessening the threat they pose. The film also contains quite a few kiddie cartoon clichés (disembodied eyes bobbing in darkness, etc.) and a mine car chase that’s lifted rather shamelessly from INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM. Furthermore, Jannik Hastrup can’t refrain from including a superfluous musical segue, in the form of a contrived multi-character dance-a-thon, of a type that tends to clutter kid movies then and now.
Vital Statistics
DREAMING OF PARADISE (STRIT OG STUMME)
Dansk Tegnefilm
Director: Jannik Hastrup
Producer: Tivi Magnusson
Screenplay: Jannik Hastrup, Bent Haller
Cinematography: Jakob Koch
Cast: Berthe Boelsgård, Jesper Schou, Anne Marie Helger, Jess Ingerslev, Tommy Kenter, Per Pallesen, Kirsten Peüliche, Louis Miehe-Renard, Claus Ryskjær, Berthe Qvistgaard