- Free Jimmy
Infobox_Film
name =Free Jimmy
imdb_id =0298337
writer =Christopher Nielsen
English script bySimon Pegg
starring =Woody Harrelson Kyle MacLachlan Simon Pegg Samantha Morton Jay Simpson David Tennant
director =Christopher Nielsen
producer =Håkon Gundersen and
Lars Andreas Hellebust
distributor =
released =March 17 2006
runtime =80 min.
language =English
Norwegian
music =
awards =
budget =$16 million
gross =$2,262,511 (Norway)|"Free Jimmy" (No: "Slipp Jimmy fri") is a Norwegian film released in 2006. It is Norway's first computer animated
feature film , the second most expensive Norwegian film to date, costing in excess of 100 millionNorwegian krone r. The film is written and directed by NorwegianChristopher Nielsen , with English screenplay bySimon Pegg . Voice actors includeWoody Harrelson ,Kyle MacLachlan ,Samantha Morton , Simon Pegg,David Tennant andJay Simpson .The voice actors for the Norwegian version included
Kristopher Schau , Jan Sælid, Are&Odin, Egil Birkeland, Terje Ragner, Anders T. Andersen and Mikkel Gaup.Plot
Roy Arnie has a dream of one day running his own circus. He and his friends, Odd, Gaz and Flea are uprooted from their mean city streets to work with Ringmaster Stromowski in a touring Russian circus in terminal decline. The star attraction is Jimmy, an elephant kept happy on a cocktail of drugs. But Roy Arnie has a dream that one day he will run his own circus and he tells the boys that the key to his dream is Jimmy. On the opening night a bungled attempt to give Jimmy his drugs causes widespread panic. Jimmy escapes and so begins a mad cap cross country road-trip to find Jimmy before he goes cold turkey.
Suddenly everyone wants a piece of Jimmy. A deranged bunch of animal activists led by clean living, straight edged couple Marius and Bettina are after Jimmy to front their cause. A trigger happy hunting party think his head would look great mounted on their wall and the Sami Mafia want to kill him for a big payoff. Jimmy’s only chance is a benevolent moose who befriends him on the road.
Awards
* Won an Amanda in the category "Best Film" in 2006.
* Awarded "Le Cristal du long métrage" atAnnecy International Animated Film Festival 2007.Additional Information
* The title is a parody of
Free Willy .
* Christopher Nielsen chose to make it in CGI instead of a traditional 2D movie because he assumed it would reduce the costs. He was wrong.Fact|date=August 2007
* A signifcant part of the film was produced in London atSlave Studios , the CGI company owned by animation producerAndy Frain .
* Though it is a Norwegian movie, the director was forced to synchronize the lip movements to the English version and then dub it to Norwegian afterwards.
* The drug addictedelephant may be inspired by the late Norwegian rock starJoachim Nielsen , who died of a drugoverdose in2000 . He is also the brother ofChristopher Nielsen . The film is also dedicated to "Jokke "ee also
*
List of animated feature films
*List of computer-animated films External links
*imdb title|id=0298337|title=Free Jimmy
* [http://www.freejimmy.com Official homepage - English version]
* [http://www.slippjimmyfri.no Official homepage - Norwegian version]
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