Free Jimmy

2006

1h 26m

Comedy

Animation

List

10%

10 Reviews

Tomatometer

55%

5,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

An eclectic group of people tries to free an elephant.

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Critics Consensus

A weird, misfiring, Norwegian animated mess of a film. Unsure of who its target audience is, it misses every target.

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GreaserParty

It's a deep and enjoyable movie. It's unfortunate that it hasn't been enjoyed by a lot of people

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

03/25/24

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Real movie O

This is a real movie. Not based on horrific Hollywood ideals. It's morally insane and a must watch.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/12/24

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Jenzer L

Absolut genialer Film für Erwachsene. Ganz harte Kost aber genial umgesetzt. 11/10 Punkten! Mega!

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/07/23

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Audience Member

I honestly didn't see any problems with the uneven tone until the titular elephant befriended a moose. These scenes are the best in the whole movie with wholesome interactions communicated entirely through visuals all culminating in a tragic end. It made all the absurd violent slapstick all the more jarring. Free Jimmy does certainly have a unique charm to it. The voice actors for the English dub do a good job and there are a few moments where I burst out laughing thanks to some decent comedic timing, especially with Kyle MacLachlan's animal activist. The animation and character designs are ugly but they honestly grew on me in a weird way. Probably because unappealing animation does not equal a movie of poor quality. Of course, Free Jimmy has its downsides. There's the clashing tones once Jimmy becomes friends with a moose, some of the black comedy relating to animals was cringey without Crossing the Line Twice and none of the human characters are worth rooting for since they all, including the animal activists/TWAATS, want Jimmy for their own ulterior motives. I've never seen the original version and I've only seen the dub so I can't be sure whether the problems are a result of Norwegian script's nuance being lost in translation or if Norway's sense of humour doesn't lend itself well to other countries. Which is a shame because it seems that Simon Pegg's English script left the story largely unchanged outside of changing some of the characters' nationalities and having the first 10 minutes set in England. At least it didn't pull the same stunt as Doogal and have pop culture references everywhere that weren't in the original as if namedropping IPs that were popular at the time is the joke. Free Jimmy is certainly an unconventional animated movie that deals with some heavy themes such as animal cruelty and drug trafficking whose uneven mix of comedy and drama make it a movie worth checking out at least once, even if I don't share Saberspark's opinions about this being surprisingly good*. It has far too many flaws for me to call it a good movie but it's also too competently made and dubbed, with even the ugly animation being more strangely charming than off-putting, to qualify as "so bad, it's good". *I actually first heard of Free Jimmy years before Saberspark uploaded his video talking about it, mostly when I was browsing IMDb and saw a poster related to my current searches about some elephant. I saw the trailer, shrugged it off and moved on with my life none the wiser before I saw the title on TVTropes years later, clicked on it and got a serious case of deja vu. My point is, while people might have grown more interested in seeing this peculiar piece of Norwegian adult animation because of Saberspark, I grew more interested because of memories flooding back to me. So now you know a small piece of trivia about me.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

01/23/23

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Audience Member

Absolutely amazing! People are being extremely harsh on this movie, it's not meant to be a feel-good story, it's supposed to make you think, and tell a tragic story. It's not the best movie ever, but it definitely does not deserve the rating it has

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

01/15/23

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Audience Member

I really liked this film. Its not perfect, but it certainly ain't a 10%

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/12/23

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Christopher Nielsen

Director

Woody Harrelson

Roy Arnie

Simon Pegg

Odd

Phil Daniels

Gaz

Jay Simpson

Flea

Kyle MacLachlan

Marius

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Derek Adams

Time Out

This adult-orientated, computer-generated animation isn't an especially successful outing but still serves as an impressive antidote to the Disney-Pixar norm.

Rated: 3/6

Oct 17, 2008

Full Review

James Christopher

Times (UK)

Deeply unhinged, deeply awful.

Rated: 1/5

Oct 17, 2008

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Xan Brooks

Guardian

Free Jimmy is a sledgehammer Norwegian animation that metes out all manner of cruelty to dumb animals, not least the ones in the audience.

Rated: 1/5

Oct 17, 2008

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Matthew Turner

ViewLondon

Rated: 1/5

Oct 23, 2008

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Richard Luck

Film4

Norway may be wonderful for many things but feature-length animation currently isn't one of them.

Rated: 1.5/5

Oct 17, 2008

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Tim Evans

Sky Cinema

They say an elephant never forgets. But even the most anally-retentive pachyderm would be desperate to banish this misfiring mess to the darkest reaches of memory.

Rated: 1/5

Oct 17, 2008

Full Review

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Synopsis

An eclectic group of people tries to free an elephant.

Director: Christopher Nielsen
Producer: Bill Godfrey
Screenwriter: Christopher Nielsen, Simon Pegg
Production Co: AnimagicNet A/S, Storm Films, Modelink
Genre: Comedy, Animation
Original Language: English
Runtime: 1h 26m
Sound Mix: Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio: Flat (1.85:1)