The ninja’s revenge – Ternet ninja (2018)

Directed by: Thorbjørn Christoffersen, Anders Matthesen | 80 minutes | animation, family | Dutch voice cast: Sara Dol, Rosa Dol, Marcella de Bie, Pascal Scherpenkate

Parents with young children know that the children’s film market is flooded with cheap digital animation films. Did you have to wait years for the latest carefully crafted stop-motion clay films from Aardman Animations (think Wallace & Gromit) or the virtuoso cartoons from Ghibli studios, and the first productions of Pixar had their own recognizable signature, nowadays the digital animation films worldwide from the computer according to a standard recipe. Where hand-drawn animation films (with or without the aid of some digital techniques) try to distinguish themselves through a special drawing style and use of color, the digital work converges to a new gold standard: solid but predictable.

At first glance, this doesn’t seem to be any different with ‘The Ninja’s Revenge’ (2020). The figures and the use of color are reminiscent of, for example, ‘Troll hunters’ from DreamWorks. Yet after a few minutes there is a surprise: the story opens with a scene that is quite intense for a children’s film, and then we are treated to a collection of somewhat curious characters. Because as it turns out, ‘The Ninja’s Revenge’ is a Danish production and everyone in the story seems to have walked straight out of a Thomas Vinterberg film.

The ninja from the title is a cuddly toy made by children in a Thai sewing workshop. The children are tortured by a Thai supervisor, but the real villain is a Danish toy manufacturer who comes to inspect the factory and in a fit of rage beats one of the children to death. The last doll that killed the victim comes to life and travels to Denmark for revenge.

Despite the usual animation style, ‘Vengeance of the Ninja’ distinguishes itself positively from its American counterparts. Namely because of the uniqueness of the decor, the characters, and perhaps also that typical Danish, somewhat black, humour. Because ‘The revenge of the ninja’ is especially funny.