Life in Solby is nice and peaceful until one day, Mitcho and Sebastian find a message in a bottle by the harbor. The bottle is from the missing mayor of Solby with a message that he is on a mysterious island and has made a great discovery. Now they must embark on a perilous journey to help save the mayor and bring him home, and in the process, they uncover something that will bring great pleasure to the city of Solby – a giant pear.
The Danish cartoon, “The Giant Pear,” will make you less aggravated with your children’s American shows. I’m serious, the writers, Bo Hr. Hansen and Jakob Martin Strid were enjoying some happy Danish drugs while writing this bizarre film. The one small favor they did their audience was to keep the movie short at just over an hour. I have to admit, I did fast-forward through the one horrid song and parts of the journey at sea and you will want to too.
Maybe the writers saw the movie “James and the Giant Peach” and put their own spin on the book-turned-movie. They did not do a good job. Even my kids were begging for the movie to be over. The plot was simple enough, the mayor of Sunny Town goes missing and his little cat and elephant friends go on a journey to find him on the lost island. A harrowing trek requires trials like growing a ship. This is how I know the movie was written while drunk or stoned. Sebastian the elephant and Mitcho the cat (a girl by the way) have to grow their ship to sail the open seas and find the island where their marooned friend, the mayor waits.
The only interesting part of the film was the letter in a bottle then the movie lost its mind and turned weird. A wacky scientist shows up to help the kids turn a giant pear into a ship. The trio escapes the evil mayor-to-be in town before facing pirates, a submarine, a monster, and a bunch of ghosts before reaching the island. Nothing about the journey on the water was less than annoying. The voices of the characters weren’t quite as annoying as “My Little Pony” so that’s one point in favor of this film.
Why this movie came to America, I will never understand as the characters are too babyish even for fans of Disney Junior and the plot will not register with an American audience. Maybe this film was a success in Europe but here, audiences are more sophisticated and want better drawings, a less psychedelic plot, and plausible main characters. Why some creatures are humans and others are animals makes no sense at all. I’m moving on with my life and suggest you move on without this cartoon.
Now available on VOD
