The incredible story of the mega large pear – Den utrolige historie om den kæmpestore pære (2017)

Directed by: Amalie Næsby Fick, Jørgen Lerdam, Philip Einstein Lipski | 79 minutes | animation | Dutch voice cast: Mats Hoogland, Nathalie Haneveld, Frank Hoelen, Hein van Beem, Daan van Rijssel

When you think of Danish youth films, you quickly think of high-quality live-action productions in which serious themes are addressed in an accessible manner. However, animation films are also made in the Scandinavian country. And that is not without merit. The latest shoot on the tree is ‘The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear’ from 2017, in which the elephant Sebastian and his best friend the cat Mitcho play the lead roles. The story is based on the children’s book of the same name by Jakob Martin Strids and was a great success in our own country. Not only did the audience appreciate the film, but ‘The incredible story of the mega-sized pear’ was awarded a Robert – the Danish equivalent of the Golden Calf – for best children’s and youth film. The film, made by the directorial trio Jørgen Lerdam, Amalie Næsby Fick and Philip Einstein Lipski, also attracted attention at the Berlin Film Festival, with a nomination in the side competition for children’s films, Generation KPlus.

‘The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear’ is characterized by a vivid imagination and a good dose of humor. Solby, a small and peaceful Danish harbor town, is a good place for friends Sebastian and Mitcho. Until the beloved mayor they affectionately call “JB” disappears overnight. When he has been missing for a year, and the deputy mayor, who suffers from megalomania, is about to take over the mayor’s post for good, the friends accidentally find a bottle in the sea containing a note with a mysterious text: ‘To whomever finds this message , I am stranded on the mysterious island. Please save me! But be careful of the cruel pirates and the Black Sea’. Sebastian and Mitcho are convinced that the note is from JB and decide to save him. They do this in a huge pear that has been converted into a boat. They are helped in their search by the mad professor Glykose, who sails with them to the open sea. Together they set course for the mysterious island where the mayor is said to be found, a place no one has ever returned from. They soon find themselves in a special adventure full of weird pirates, sea monsters and giant pears.

This seventy-nine-minute animated film is charmingly illustrated. The style is comical rather than realistic and contributes to the humorous tone. Human and animal figures live side by side and the people in particular are portrayed quite caricatured; Brushes a tiny underdoor who can barely control his anger, the professor with a wild gray haircut and a huge nose and the pirates of all shapes and sizes. The story is rich in fantasy and is told smoothly. Nice finds are the cross-sections of the means of transport that we see; the huge pear with its several floors that overflows with goodies, but also the beautifully designed ‘dragon submarine’ by the eccentric inventor Ulysses Karlssen, which our heroes encounter along the way. The attention to detail here is impressive. The figures are voiced by, among others, Nathalie Haneveld, Mats Hoogland, Frank Hoelen and Hein van Beem; for the original Danish version, top actors such as Bjarne Henriksen, Jakob Oftebro and Henrik Koefoed were recruited. ‘The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear’ is very entertaining thanks to its rich imagination and eye for detail; what it lacks is a lack of depth and emotional impact that animation films from the stables of Disney/Pixar and Studio Ghibli – which nevertheless set the bar against which animation films are set – often have.