Animation Fest Reviews

Valhalla (Denmark, 1986) * (Nuart Theater, today; 2 p.m.; 75 minutes).

“Valhalla” reduces the legends of the Norse gods and heroes to so much Saturday-morning kidvid. All the power, poetry and meaning have been stripped away and replaced with wholesome, lobotomized adventures.

The storytelling is so inept, it’s difficult to determine what’s supposed to be happening in the film. For reasons that are never explained, Thor adopts two Viking children, who take up with Quark, a vicious baby giant. (Their friendship supposedly reforms the little monster, but his personality doesn’t seem to improve much.)

Meanwhile, Thor and Loki are out fighting other giants--including Quark’s family--although the audience is never told why.

The artists avoid a lot of animation by moving the camera over still artwork. In fact, so many corners have been cut on the film, it should be projected onto a round screen. The voices were dubbed in England, and Vikings who speak with broad, Cockney accents seem rather incongruous.

“Valhalla” is probably no worse for children than 75 minutes of Saturday-morning TV, but it certainly isn’t going to stimulate their imaginations, the way reading the original legends would.

“Vampires in Havana” (Cuba, 1985) ** (Nuart Theater, today; 9:45 p.m; 75 minutes.

Writer-director Juan Padron attempts to spoof the cliches of American gangster and vampire movies, and to tell the story of a jazz trumpeter who leads a popular revolution against a corrupt dictator. Padron juggles the various stories but never weaves them into a coherent narrative.

Why the trumpeter (who is also a vampire) wants to lead a revolt is never established. Nor is it clear if his enemy is the local police chief or the head of the country.

The animation is amateurish, often on the level of a student film. But the artists’ obvious enthusiasm for their work gives some scenes a rambunctious zest that many more polished films lack.

Footrot Flats (New Zealand, 1986) ** 1/2 (Nuart Theater, Sunday; 9:45 p.m.; 90 minutes.)

Based on Murray Ball’s popular Australian comic strip of the same name, “Footrot Flats” centers on Wal, a well-intentioned slob of a sheep rancher, and his intelligent dog, Dog, who narrates the film.

The everyday adventures of this agreeably low-life duo might have made an entertaining half-hour special. The sequences depicting Dog’s efforts to keep Wal in training for a football match (and prevent him from messing around with his girlfriend) provide some real laughs. But at 90 minutes, the material is simply stretched too thin, and an elaborate subplot involving a family of hooligans who kidnap deer with a helicopter fails to pay off.

The raunchy humor of “Footrot Flats”--an alarm clock falls into a chamber pot, sheep defecate on things--may surprise American audiences accustomed to the sanitized jokes of Saturday-morning kidvid. The limited animation and the basic design of Dog suggest that the film makers have been studying the American “Peanuts” specials.

While hardly a great film, “Footrot Flats” contains segments that adults will enjoy--which puts it several notches above the recent American animated features devoted to toy characters.