Terkel in Trouble
Terkel in Trouble (Terkel i knibe) is a 2004 Danish computer animated adult-oriented musical dark comedy horror film, and Denmark's very first all-CG animated feature. Terkel is a sixth-grader who lives with a dysfunctional family, and other people in his home town are no better, from his foul-mouthed best friend, Jason, who always brings around an iron bar, to resident school bullies Sten and Saki.
One day Terkel starts receiving death threats. Could they be from Sten and Saki, who were beaten by Terkel's abusive, alcoholic Uncle Stewart? Or from Jason, whose fat, ugly sister committed suicide after being rejected and mocked by Terkel, who didn't know she and Jason were relatives? Or maybe the new teacher, nature-loving hippie Gunnar, has something to do with it...
Terkel In Trouble features a cast of mostly kids, provides dark and cynical humour, as well as unpleasant character designs, and thus is often compared with South Park; however, Terkel is not satirical and is far less surreal than South Park.
The film is based on a radio show created by comedian Anders Matthesen, who does all voice acting for both the radio show and (in the original Danish) the film.
- Adults Are Useless
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Played with. Johanna likes Jason who in turn dosn't fall for her until she tells him to "Fuck off and die".
- Amazing Technicolor Population: For some reason one of the two bullies has greenish skin.
- Animated Actors: The scenes during the end credits show that the characters are just actors playing a part, even if it seems that someone takes this too seriously... Most of them are also Playing Against Type.
- Animated Adaptation: of a long-running radio drama/comedy
- Art Shift: Gunnar's song about a poor Thai boy is visualized in a "paper cut-out" style vaguely reminiscent of South Park.
- Camera Abuse: For a brief moment Terkel involuntarily pisses over the camera "lens".
- Canon Immigrant: Stewart Stardust, Terkel's uncle, was a character created by comedian Anders Matthesen several years before this film.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Gunnar wants to kill Terkel because he sat upon a spider, squashing it.
- Eye Scream: Rita is eventually blinded... by forks.
- Finger-Twitching Revival: Gunnar
- Granola Girl: Gunnar can be considered a male example.
- Hilarious Outtakes
- Limited Wardrobe: Every character has always the same outfit, except for Arne, who appears as several characters during the whole film. Terkel's father also reads the same newspaper every day!
- Lost Aesop / Spoof Aesop: At the end, Arne tries to come up with An Aesop, but fails (saying a lot of weird things) and simply goes away.
- All of them are proverbs that he's got mixed up.
- Mary Sue: An in-universe example. We discover at the end that Arne is also the director of the film, so it makes sense that he cast himself as the narrator, the character with most screentime (except Terkel, of course) and the only one who isn't some kind of jerk/moron/psycho.
- Narrator: Arne. He's also the music teacher and appears as many other bit roles, always addressing the audience.
- Red Herring: Many clues hint that Jason is the one out to get Terkel.
- Refuge in Audacity
- Shout-Out: to The Shining and The Godfather, among others.
- The creepy opening credits are inspired by Se7en's opening credits.
- Slapstick Knows No Gender: Or age as poor Rita finds out.
- Split-Screen Phone Call: When Terkel phones to uncle Stewart. Near the end, Terkel also phones to his parents, who were apparently involved in some kind of sex act (father dressed as a baby and mother as a dominatrix).
- Talking to Himself: To the extreme - in the original Danish version, stand-up comedian Anders Matthesen voices every single character in the film.
- The Norwegian, Swedish and German translations were also each voiced by one guy.
- The Unintelligible: Leon, Terkel's father, is able to communicate just by saying "No" over and over with various tones.
- Parodied during the Hilarious Outtakes, when Leon can't remember what he's supposed to say.