"Turen til Squashland" or "The Trip to Squash Land" is a Danish 2-minute animated short film from 1967, so this one is already over half a century old and this is in fact the very first filmmaking effort by a certain Lars von Trier, without the "von" at that point still when he was around the age of 10. Several more films should follow in the coming years. Well what can you say about this one here. It is visible this was made by a child. If I take his age into account, I'd probably have given it a 7 or 8 out of 10, but by general standards it simply isn't a good watch. The Danish kid singing (is that also him?) is much more interesting than anything you see on screen here, apparently a story about rabbits or so and one gets abducted at some point, so there is a certain traditional good vs. evil plot in it already. But the plot and what is going on is far from obvious. Even if you understand the lyrics of the song, which is not necessary to watch this one, it's not helping I'm sure. All in all, interesting to see how LvT started and his completionists can check this one out, but the most interesting thing for me besides the music is the word shown eventually on the screen (I cannot write it, otherwise my review will be automatically declined because it includes prohibited words, really imdb? it rhymes with "but" and "mud") which I assume is the Danish word for "end", but I am more than convinced von Trier is happily accepting the double meaning. Overall, a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
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Horst_In_Translation26 December 2018
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Rectangular_businessman2 February 2024Who would have thought the career of the controversial director of films like The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, Antichrist and The House That Jack Built would have started in such an innocent manner?
It might be a little bit crudely made (Though considering Lars made this short when he was only 11 years old, this is fairly impressive) with a somewhat nonsensical story about a sausage superhero helping some rabbits to rescue their abducted friend from some villains, but it's definitely not without charm.
I think it was cute, the complete opposite of one would expect from a Lars von Trier film.