Valhalla

From looking at the other reviews, it seems like a lot of people saw this as children and fell in love with it, and are still looking at it through that lens. Well, I read the comics as a kid and loved them, and still love them as an adult, but having just seen the movie I was really disappointed. This movie has barely any plot to it (whetever plot there is could have been told in about 15 minutes) and it spends a lot of time on ultimately meaningless fooling around. Now, you can expect a few dancing and singing scenes and playing around in an animation, but if that's what the bulk of the movie consists of and nothing really happens, then it's ultimately very uninteresting, I have to say. Very little of the wit and the nicely-packed adventures of the original comics are to be found here--if they'd just decided to pick one of the earlier albums and dramatise that, this would've been much interesting. It really doesn't help that they decided to include the Quark, who is mostly an incredibly annoying little git who makes everyone's life miserable, yet we are somehow supposed to feel sympathy for him. And unfortunately, the Quark's story is the only really character-oriented bit in the movie. Parts of the movie illustrate the old Norse myths wonderfully and the backgrounds are beautifully painted, but overall there's just not that much meat to it. In a movie about Norse myths, I would've enjoyed seeing more mythical adventures instead of 20-minute sequences of kids building tree houses and clapping their hands, or endless excruciatingly frustrating sequences of the Quark breaking stuff and being annoying. I would've wanted to see more of Thor, Loki and Odin because the nature of the gods was pretty close to what it was in the myths and the comics, but instead I just got a baby troll whose neck I wanted to wring. I'm really surprised that such witty and entertaining comics (with fun and exciting versions of the old myths) could result in such a frustrating and boring movie. It's a great shame, because there was certainly a lot of potential.

This is a Danish classic, that have touched all children and the little child within of the "grown-ups".

Watch it and fall in love with it.

Truly wonderful.

It's great to see a feature length animated movie that doesn't completely succumb to the Disney way of doing things. Plus, it has a killer score.

I can't understand how one could be praising such a typical animation as this one.

Music and effects are basic stuff for most parts and they don't deserve any kind of special remark. There is absolutely no positively unconventional or surprising element in the score. It might as well have been ripped from Disney or some forgotten television animation series. At the end of the movie the music shifts into a horrible pop rock song musical which made my stomach turn.

Characters are conventional animation characters portrayed without any authentic personality. There is absolutely no respect in "Thor" who is supposed to be a though guy, so it doesn't matter so much that he is also a loser who can't do anything right. His sidekick "Loki" has to act as Thor's brains even though he isn't too bright himself. So it is a good break that this couple gets bunch of kids to help them out in their difficult quest of beating up a group of giants in a game of intelligence. In the meanwhile these kids go look "Odin" playing chess and also a big part of the movie is dedicated for these kids playing in a tree house.

Real family values are taught by only briefly exposing Thor's wife while she takes care of Thor's children and cooks stew (god's wife thus gives a good example to mortal children about the role of women in the house). I'm also worried about sexual values in this movie: there are no beautiful ladies or knights in this fairytale, only kids, muscle men and badly animated troll giants. So if one likes to see the great gods of Valhalla perverted into a bunch of wimps playing around with mortal (and immortal) children this is the movie to see.

I gave this 2/10 because at the end of the movie there is a two second shot of a chicken waving it's rear sphincter (I'm not kidding) at the camera. I considered this to be a relatively original idea of making the audience feel like they have been screwed.

I will not hide it: This is the movie that defines my childhood and might be one of the things that had a major impression on me. Yet still, it does have its weaknesses: The good things first: There are, compared to other mythologies, only few movies that handle the material in a fair and nice way and not reduce the norse folks and their gods down to brutal dumb-heads with horned helmets. Valhalla, the movie and the comics even more so, certainly know what they are talking about. The movie's story is based on the mythological tale of Thor's journey to Utgard with some minor myths and some additional comic-relief mixed into it. The result is a movie that does provide some good morals without hammering them into the viewer's head like so many films unfortunately do nowadays. But now for the downsides: The movie has its dragging parts. Thor playing with his children, the building of the hut etc are nice, but feel a bit long. The responding volumes of the comic (volume 4 and 5 to be precise) came out after the movie and might, in comparison, feel a bit better done. Especially since the comics explain a lot more where the movie left things out or just had them as a throw-away scene. Another weakness might be that the movie feels a bit like it expects the viewer to know the mythology by heart at times.

Therefore, to conclude this: The movie is certainly watching, whether or not you know the myths. But try to get your hands on the comics, they are worth a look even more, if I may say so.