French-Canadian hit goes anglo in kid-centric yarn
We’re living in a golden age of kids’ films that don’t pander. Last year brought the perfect (and dialogue free!) Shaun the Sheep Movie as well as Inside Out, which dared to suggest that sadness has a role to play in children’s lives.
We also saw the charmingly retro Peanuts Movie. And Quebecers got La Guerre des Tuques, which made more money in 2015 than any other Canadian release, in spite of playing in just one province. Now the rest of Canada can have a look at the 3D animated film, dubbed in English and renamed Snowtime!
It’s a remake of a 1984 liveaction story that went by the English name The Dog Who Stopped the War. (That’s a semi-spoiler, but I won’t explain it except to say it provides a bittersweet ending.) Over Christmas break in an unnamed but very snowy small town, bored youngsters decide to stage a battle. One team will build a fort. The other will attack it. Whoever occupies the territory at the end of two weeks will be declared the winner.
Co-directors Jean-François Pouliot and François Brisson explore the rules of war (this one includes no fighting after dark), the boredom of guard duty, the danger of an arms race — snowballs beget iceballs, which leads to paintballs — and the use of cannon fodder, in the form of snowsuited, faceless first-graders.
There’s also the tricky issue of what to do when combatants from opposite armies are sweet on each other. That would be Luke (Angela Galuppo) and Sophie (Lucinda Davis), the new kid in town and one of the few girls around.
As with Peanuts, the film wastes no time with adults, who are presumed to be nearby, making dinners and drying wet clothes, but are never seen or even trombonely heard. It’s all about kids.
And while the humour tends toward the cloying (too many jokes featuring dog flatulence and twins who speak in unison), the overall tone is sweet and simple. Besides, eight million French-Canadians can’t be wrong.