Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be checking out a Danish animated film from 1990. That movie is "War of the Birds".
Now, the story behind this movie is a rather fascinating one, and it mainly has to do with how it was brought over to the U.S. You see, most people who know about this movie don't even know that there is an English dub for it. They mostly know it's original version, which was entitled "Fuglekrigen". And, like I said, it came out in 1990. It wasn't until 1998, when a certain company decided to dub it for English audiences. I'm gonna get more into that in a bit.
Now, as for how I came across this movie, I honestly stumbled upon it by accident. And when I was doing the small amount of research on this movie, what I uncovered really intrigued me enough to warrant covering for this series. I found this English dub on YouTube, and I was going to get ready to cover it at some point. Unfortunately, the company that originally made this movie, which was Nordisk Film, took the movie down, and I had no way of covering it anymore. That was until, one day, the person who originally uploaded the movie on YouTube said that one of his fans saved the English dub on Google Drive. So I clicked on the link and, without listening to too much of the film, it turned out to be the English dub for this movie, and it's been on my Google Drive since. And I figured now would be the time to cover this movie, because I've been really curious to see what this thing is about.
Now, in regards to what I found out about this English dub, I can tell you that this movie was not entirely family friendly. You see, when this movie was brought over to the U.S., they had to cut quite a bit in order make this movie family friendly enough for children. Now, from what I've heard, they cut out things such as characters using their middle fingers to flip someone off, there was also some sexual content in the original version that got taken out, and there were characters swearing. So basically, as I already stated, this film was NOT family friendly. At least, I don't think it was suppose to be when it was originally made in Denmark. I wouldn't know, because I don't follow what Denmark puts out for children, and I don't really care.
Now all of that is nothing new to me, because I've seen plenty of companies take foreign animated films and TV shows and edit it enough for family friendly audiences. So, none of that surprises me, personally. I don't know how it's going to affect this English dub, but I'll find that out in a moment. But what REALLY attracted my attention to this English dub comes in two different factors. One of the people who directed it, and the company they got to dub it. One of the people who directed the English dub of this movie was legendary animation producer Lou Scheimer. Lou Scheimer, for those of you unaware of who he is, was the head of an animation company known as Filmation. Which produced a ton of cartoons made for children from the 70's and 80's such as He-Man, Bravestarr, Fat Albert, Star Trek: The Animated Series, and a ton of other shows that children grew up on from back in the day. So we have him on board this project. As for the company that dubbed this movie, well, that company was Ocean Productions. And in case you're not aware of the shows that they have produced, a short list of that would be "Dragon Ball Z", "Inuyasha", "Hamtaro", "Cardcaptors", and yes, I am referring to that version, because I've never seen "Cardcaptor Sakura". But setting that trivial matter aside, we also have them on board. So, what happens when you mix in the former head of Filmation, and the dubbing company of Ocean Productions, and you put them both into a blender? Boom...you get this movie.
So with all this in mind, tonight, I'm gonna get to experience the very rarely seen, and very rarely heard, English dub. I don't know what the plot is to this movie, outside of the fact that it has something to do with birds, just basing off the title. And I know this thing is based off a book. Outside of that, I don't know anything about the plot to this movie. I don't know if it's going to be any good. I don't even know if the dub is going to be any good, but I am going to find out right now. And the only way I'm gonna do that, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "War of the Birds".
4 minutes later
OK, I have a bit of a stupid question, and I know it has nothing to do with the movie, but I am curious about something. Are owls normally this fucking huge? Because Walter, which is this owl I'm seeing right now, is fucking huge compared to this small bird. And I'm just wondering is that, like, normal for owls to be taller than birds? I don't claim to be an ornithologist, so I'm probably ignorant on this subject, but I don't think owls are that big when compared to smaller birds. Again, I understand it has nothing to do with the movie itself, but it's just something I'm curious about.
9 minutes later
Wait, so this sparrow is gonna take in this bird, without even knowing if this child bird is telling the truth that Fagin took her parents away? I understand that it's a child, but it just seems a little bit odd to me that this sparrow is automatically going to believe what this bird says and just decides to take her under it's wing. Perhaps it's just me, but it seems like this sparrow is jumping to a conclusion without even knowing if it's true or not. Again, it's a trivial thing to be bitching about, and, so far, the movie's been OK, but it's just something that was kinda bugging me slightly.
14 minutes later
You know, guys, it's kinda sad that this is the third time that this cat has fallen for this broken wing trick. You would think, by this point, that this cat would've learned it's lesson and not fall for the same trick three times. But apparently, I guess some cats don't learn, do they?
7 minutes later
OK, I wasn't expecting a musical number to happen within this movie. I will say, though...it is a little bit catchy. You guys can't hear it for obvious reasons, but this song here is not too bad. Kinda odd...it's certainly different. Again, I just wasn't really expecting a musical number of all things to happen in this movie.
8 minutes later
OK...well, I wasn't expecting that much blood coming from that one shot to the eye. That was almost fucking gruesome. Really cool, but that must've hurt like shit, dude.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "War of the Birds". I'm gonna shut the movie off...OK.
Before I get into the review, I do need to make mention of something regarding this English dub. As I've stated earlier, the dub for this movie never really saw the light of day, at least in the U.S. You see, the only way you could ever obtain a physical copy of this English dub for "War of the Birds" was if you bought the Russian import of it on DVD, where it contained both the Russian dub, and this English dub. Now, I tried to find a physical copy of this thing online, and the only thing I was able to find was a VHS copy of this movie's original Danish dub on eBay. Which was running at a very hefty price of $75, and I was not going to shill that amount money for it. So basically, this dub is probably going to stay in it's obscurity, unless some company in the U.S. decides to release this movie's dub on DVD and Blu-ray for American audiences. But even with that aside, I have a couple of other theories as to why this movie has never seen the light day here in the West. One of those theories I'm gonna get to in a bit when I talk about the writing. But I believe that, when this movie was finished being dubbed, someone over at Ocean Productions looked at the final product and thought that this movie was still too dark for kids to watch, despite all of the changes that they made to it. Now, if I were to judge this movie by today's standards, I would say that this thing is incredibly tame. But back in 1998, Ocean Productions thought otherwise, and they decided to not release it over here. Instead, they decided to package this English dub onto Russian DVD's in hopes that no one from the U.S. would be able to discover it. Now, I have no proof of this theory, and I do believe the real reason why this thing never got a release was due to distributing rights, because things involving copyrighted music can get in the way of that happening. But regardless, this thing might never see an official release in the U.S., and that's kind of a shame. Because I do believe that this dub was not too bad, all things considered. Now, that's not to say that this movie isn't flawed. Believe me, this movie has a lot of flaws. But I still believe that this movie should get a re-release of some physical form, because it really is a dub that you should watch, at least once. I guess that shows my hand rather early, but I think I should really get into the movie itself.
Let's start this by talking about the writing. Now, a moment ago, I mentioned that I had a couple of theories as to why this thing never got an official release in the U.S. And I do have another theory as to why. You see, one of the big problems that this movie suffers from is the pacing. This movie feels incredibly rushed, to a point where we don't really get a lot time to develop our characters. And I think I know why this movie feels rushed. It's because this movie's runtime is barely above an hour long. I've talked about this in the past, but when you're working with a very short runtime, you really don't have the time to build up a slower-paced story. OVA's, at least the ones I've seen anyway, also have this problem, as well. But at least most of those try to tell some kind of an interesting story, even with shorter runtimes. And I can see that this thing was trying to tell it's story, but it's trying desperately to rush through it all, so we can get to our final showdown between Oliver, Olivia, and Fagin. And because this movie desperately wanted to rush through everything, it just feels kinda hollow and empty. Now, I will say that this story had a lot of potential. Because we have our main character, Oliver, which is this child bird that loses it's parents after a fight with Fagin, our villain for this movie. It then gets later adopted by a female sparrow, along with a blue bird named Olivia, who also lost it's parents to Fagin. And it's basically this coming of age story, where Oliver and Olivia grow up and try to take down Fagin, who claims himself as "King of the Birds". And if this thing had gotten about, maybe, 30 more minutes to develop it's story and characters, then this would've been a great movie. Unfortunately, it kinda falters, because of it's rushed development. So naturally, we end up with a lot of shallow characters. And while I could see them trying with Oliver and Olivia, it still feels kinda flat. Like, I'm kinda amazed that when Oliver is first hatched, he's able to learn about stuff such as how he lost his parents to Fagin, and how he's gonna get revenge against him when he's bigger. I would think, maybe, when he got older, he would learn about this stuff then. But to have him know about all this, and able to form sentences and words as a hatchling, it just comes across as rather strange and not really that believable to me. However, I don't know the development cycle of birds, so maybe that's just something in this universe that they were born with. I don't know, but, like I said, it just felt strange to me. The same goes for Olivia. Because the female sparrow first discovers her when she was being cornered by this cat, and the sparrow was able to outwit this cat, and save this bird, who she later names Olivia. She then finds out that Olivia's parents were also killed by Fagin. Even though she has no proof of this, the female sparrow takes her in anyways. However, I'm gonna let that one slide, because since Olivia is just a child, it wasn't really a huge issue in the long run. It was something I noticed, but I got over that issue really quickly.
As for other characters in this movie, a lot of them are not really likable. The only likable characters in this movie are Oliver, Olivia, and the female sparrow that adopts them. Everybody else is incredibly unlikable, especially towards Oliver and Olivia. The only exception to this is a seagull named Armstrong. But even he's not that likable, because he just comes across as incredibly annoying throughout the entire film. As for Walter, which is the owl that was paired up with the female sparrow, sounds like he's drunk the entire time. And his main gimmick is that he steals Oliver and Olivia's food and ends up eating it himself. And he does this about three different times throughout the first half of the movie. But the most shocking one of them all that has almost no character depth is our villain Fagin. Fagin gets the least amount of time from the entire cast, because he has only ONE scene where he gets any kind of development. And unfortunately, it's the scene that I have seen on YouTube many times before, where it was a voice comparison between the different actors for each dub that was playing Fagin and the dove. And that's the ONLY scene in the movie where he's sharing a conversation with anyone. Basically, the dove was telling Fagin about a trap that the birds were setting for him, and the dove mentions the female sparrow that saved it's life once against this cat, and he was wondering if Fagin could spare her. And Fagin goes off by saying that because he's King of the Birds, anyone that tries to go against him will be killed. And that's it. He has NO other character depth to him besides that. Now, one could make an argument by saying that less is more, and that the movie was trying to build up suspense and intrigue for our villain. The problem is that, as I've stated, Fagin has only ONE scene of development And that development doesn't kick in until around the 40 minute mark of the movie. And this is one of the reasons why this movie feels so rushed. Especially knowing that Fagin only has this one scene. Every other time he's on camera, he's out trying to destroy Oliver and Olivia, which was all of twice in the entire movie. As for the dove, he also has almost no character to him, outside of being a spy for Fagin. And this movie was trying to build up sympathy for our dove. Unfortunately, like everything else in this movie, it also feels incredibly rushed. And, without delving too much into spoilers, he tries to sacrifice himself into killing Fagin. I won't say how, you're going to have to watch this thing for yourself. But basically, his character felt wasted, and I did not feel anything for him at all, even when he tried to sacrifice himself. As for other characters, such as the background birds, are all incredibly mean and dickish towards Oliver and Olivia, because they think they caused trouble for them once they hatched, and they're wondering why Fagin didn't take them. Which feels INCREDIBLY forced, and I have no idea why that is.
So overall, I can definitely say that the writing here is rather weak. Mostly because this movie was working with such a short runtime, and it could've done so much more with our characters and story. But what about the acting? Well, being that this is the rarely heard English dub, I was curious to see how the acting in this dub was going to hold up. And I can say that the acting here is pretty good. It's not great, but I can see that the entire cast was trying. Now, unlike other dubbing companies such as 4Kids and Funimation, I don't really have a ton of knowledge about Ocean's dubbing cast. But I do want to make mention of one actor in particular, which is Paul Dobson as Fagin. Paul's performance as Fagin sounds incredibly creepy, and yet kinda cheesy at the same time. To a point, where he kinda stands out the most from the entire cast. It's kind of a pity that the character only has one scene of dialogue, but at least Paul Dobson tried to make him sound menacing from that one scene. So, at least I can give props to Paul for trying to make his one scene of dialogue work. That being said, I also noticed that some of the English dialogue in this movie doesn't necessarily mesh well with the character's mouth movements. Unlike dubbing an anime, where it is a little bit more accessible because the characters in that type of medium usually move their mouths up and down, the characters in this movie are moving their mouths in a certain way. And you really have to go out of your way to try and match up with what they are trying to say. And while most of it can be overlooked, there are some scenes where it's rather noticeable. One example would be the scene I talked about earlier involving Fagin and the dove. While Fagin is talking about how he's King of the Birds, there is a moment where the mouth movement was not matching some of Paul Dobson's dialogue, and it is rather noticeable. And some other characters also kinda suffer this problem, too. But it is something that you have to take for what it's worth. And for a dub that came out in 1998, it is certainly serviceable. So, I can at least say that the acting works fine here. Like I said, it isn't great, but I've heard far worse.
Now let's get to the animation. I will say that that look of this movie is certainly unique. A lot of the background areas look like they might've been water painted. It's especially noticeable in murkier areas, such as Fagin's hideout, or anything involving darkness. And anything involving lighter areas looks really good, too. The character designs on the birds are simple, but of some of them have just enough of a design to stand out from other birds. Well...except for maybe the owls, because there's a scene involving a musical number and I couldn't tell you if it was Walter or if it was some different owl, because those two look very similar to each other. But aside from them, most of the other character designs are pretty good. There are two characters, however, I do need to make mention of. One of them is the only human character in this entire movie, who seems to be bird watching with his dog. At one point, we see the back view of this guy, and you can see the pencil shading move rather oddly on the back of his coat. I get that the movie wanted to try and give off the illusion of shading, but the rough pencil shading on the coat kinda stops that from happening. But that's really more of a minor issue, because it only happens for one scene. The other character I want to make mention of is the dove. It seems like the people who were animating this movie didn't know if they wanted to make the dove look bright yellow, white, or pink. Because early on, we get to see the dove, and the color palette looks bright as hell on him. I'm not sure if the bright yellow was suppose to be because he was flying during the daytime when the sun was out or what. And when we first see him, there is not a shade of pink anywhere on him. But then later on, we totally get to see him up close, and then all of a sudden he has a spot of pink on him. And he has that on him throughout the latter half of the movie. Again, I don't know what the animators were trying to go for when animating the dove, but the striking color differences on the dove were definitely noticeable, and it is rather inconsistent. It didn't take me out of the film entirely, but it is something that you're probably going to notice. Overall, guys, I can say that the animation looks pretty good. There are some moments of choppy animation, but since it's incredibly minor, I'm not going to necessarily count it as a negative.
Music here is OK. Like, the songs are OK, but they're not anything memorable, outside of, maybe, that one song Armstrong sings in the middle of the movie. Beyond that, our score here is nothing special. Sound-mix, however, is kind of an issue with this movie. Because there are some scenes where the music will drown out the sound effects. One good example of that is when one of the mouses is drowning in a river towards a waterfall. And you'll barely be able to hear the character screaming for help, because the music decided to turn itself up a notch and drown out his cries for help. Another example of this is during another musical number. And no, I am not kidding about that, there is another musical number in this movie. And during this number, there's one moment where Olivia is singing and there's an egg that drops onto Oliver's head, but there's NO sound of the egg breaking. Now, I don't know if this was a technical issue on my end, or if it was like that with the English dub for this movie, I don't even know if it was an issue involving the original Danish dub. But regardless of all that, the sound-mix is definitely an issue with this movie. It's not Sonic Adventure 2's level of awful sound-mixing, especially when it comes to the music, but it's certainly noticeable here. At least, with this English dub, it is.
Overall, guys, when all is said and done, can I recommend "War of the Birds"? Personally...it's kind of hard to give a full recommendation, given that this thing has a rushed story and characters who are mostly flat. However, I am going to say yes, if just for the curiosity of what this English dub is like. In fact, I'm going to do something that I've never done before in this series. I'm going to provide a link to this movie for you guy's to watch in the description. Because it really is a dub that should gain some more attention. And who knows? You might find something more out of this thing than I did. And while I don't think it's something that I'm going to watch a second time, I can say that this movie's dub is worth watching, at least once. And considering how obscure this dub is, it would be very hard for someone to find a physical copy of this movie with this English dub. But I'm hoping that you guys will be able to help spread this dub around, because it really is an interesting movie to say the least. Now...as for myself, I think I'm gonna go watch another coming of age movie. And I think I'm gonna watch "Kiki's Delivery Service", because that is certainly a fantastic movie that's able to make a coming of age story work so well.
Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all in the near future. Peace.
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