- Released: October 21st, 2022
- Directed by: Kajsa Næss
- Running time: 1h 31min
- Rating 3.5/5
Synopsis
My Thoughts
I legit never heard of this movie before it randomly popped up on one of my streaming services, and needless to say it instantly took my interest. It's xenofiction, it stars a dog, it's about polar expeditions, and it features zeppelins, it's a modern 2D-animated movie. Those are all things I'm interested in.
And yeah, it's overall a pretty darn strong movie. It's based on true events, but because I don't know enough about the real deal to say whether it's accurate or not I won't touch on this aspect.
But for what we got, a story about the first dog to travel across the North Pole with her owner Nobile and experienced explorer Amundsen. The exploration aspect is cool and handled well enough, but the real star of the movie is the relationship between Nobile and Amundsen. They don't always see eye to eye but they do feel like genuinely real characters (which makes sense as they're based on real people) and their relationship, with all its ups and downs, feels realistic and tangible. It also ends on a rather sad note as Amundsen vanishes and presumably dies while trying to rescue Nobile, even after how turbulent their relationship was as of late.
As for Titina, the titular dog herself...she's fine. But honestly with her being in the title and being the main character of the movie I kind of experienced more of her. She doesn't really feel like a character. She's more so just a blank slate through which the events of the movie are observed. Nobile and Amundsen fill the roles of protagonists way more than Titina ever does.
I don't really mind this all that much, but with how heavily the movie advertises the dog character you'd think she'd have more of an impact on the story. She also doesn't have that much personality to her. I don't need her to talk or anything (heck, I'm glad they didn't go that route), but even without having your canine character talk you can still get across a bit of personality. But Titina really did feel like a blank slate sometimes, she doesn't have a whole lot of personality or traits to her other than "is a dog". So I do think she was slightly underutilized int his movie.
Also, I just gotta say the 50-something year timeskip with the dog still being alive after all that is just weird and jarring. I don't know why they decided to so this. This movie is pretty down-to-earth and realistic throughout most of it (barring one vision scene of Titina's), but somehow Titina has a far longer lifespan than any dog realistically could. I guess because they wanted to have her die alongside an elderly Nobile, maybe? But it still doesn't make much sense and makes this otherwise pretty grounded movie feel rather jarring when the flashback text says "fifty-something years earlier" and the dog is somehow still alive in the prologue.
Finally, this movie's depiction of Mussolini is...a choice. Again, I don't know how involved the real Mussolini was in Nobile's exploits, but this movie basically portrays him as an over-the-top comic relief character who nobody takes seriously. Which on the one hand I can get behind, poking fun of an evil historical person can be funny and welcome sometimes. But, again, I just don't feel it's really appropriate here considering the tone of the rest of the movie, which is pretty serious and grounded. To suddenly have this cartoon caricature of Mussolini serve as over-the-top comic relief feels unfitting and while I get the movie wanted to poke fun at him it just doesn't feel like it fits in this story.
Finally, I do wanna touch on the animation. It's simplistic, but pretty good. It's not Disney-levels of beautiful 2D animation but it definitely works and I do overall like the art-style, it was appealing to look at. The flat colors did feel a bit cheap at times though and the backgrounds could also be pretty simple and flat-looking. I do wonder if something like watercolor-esque backgrounds with some depth to them could've been more fitting, with simpler 2D-animated characters on top. The movie also uses CGI models effectively and it was blended together well enough with the 2D-animated elements. The animation is by no means amazing but it was still appealing to look at and rather good.
So yeah, overall a pretty solid movie. The highlights are the human characters and their relationships, as well as some of the visual aspects and the journey the characters undertake. But the lesser aspects were the fact that Titina herself is underutilized and the depiction of Mussolini which felt very unfitting with the movie's otherwise pretty grounded tone.
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