Movie Time Capsule Blog Volume 3: "The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking"

When I first got the idea to write about movies that are vaguely remembered, I went through box office receipts week by week and made a list of movies that I remembered by title, had seen, or hadn’t heard of at all. Films that were successes, iconic, or made by art house directors with large followings were (for the most part) eliminated from contention.

Following the first round of cuts, I did precursory research on the hundreds of titles that remained. If I hadn’t seen the movie and there was no way I could, it was eliminated. If it was a movie I saw when I was young, but was currently unavailable in any form today or was too hard to track down without paying a fortune, it was also eliminated unless I had sufficient research materials that could be used to refresh my memory.

When the list was finalized, there remained another list of films that I set to the side that I knew I could write quite a bit about. These were the films that I either had a story about or there was a wealth of information available about them. These movies were saved for my reader’s choice polls (of which, as you can see, there is a new one).

I was planning on writing about all three of the movies I listed, but the one that wins the poll, will be the one that gets posted first. I will admit that I never expected this week’s winner, “The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking” to have won.

With only a couple of days left in the voting, all three movies were locked in a seemingly endless three way tie. I shrugged it off and rewatched both “Night of the Creeps” and “No Holds Barred;” taking notes and writing an outline. Not once did I hold out much hope for Pippi winning. Then my friend Lisa broke the tie and Pippi won by one vote. Not that I minded, since all three films have great stories that I have planned to post.

When they are posted later in the week, my entry for “Night of the Creeps” will focus on how Hollywood has a pretty loose definition of plagiarism and “No Holds Barred” will focus on my love of both cheesy professional wrestling and cheesy, terrible movies. “Pippi” was the only movie out of the three, however, that I actually had a personal story for.

In my first film related entry about “Chain Reaction,” I mentioned how I lived near a movie theatre, but what I never mentioned were the other three theatres in the city of Worcester when I was growing up, and how it was near impossible to get my mother to take me to any movies that weren’t showing at the theatre across the street.

My mother bought me a set of five Pippi Longstocking book, written by Swedish children’s author Astrid Lindgren. I immediately fell in love with this wild, free-spirited daughter of a pirate and her adventures around the world. Pippi always eschewed adult rules and regulations and what she lacked in couth, she made up for with her own brand of loyalty and common sense.

Upon it’s release in 1988, the television commercials for “The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking” immediately caught my eye, and the upbeat theme from the movie was already pleasing to my young ears. As the weeks passed and the film’s release got closer and closer, I kept my fingers crossed that they movie would be playing across the street. I was crushed when the movie opened at the least accessible theatre for my family: the Webster Square theatre. Webster Square was so far from where I lived it might as well have been located in a Moscow suburb.

I didn’t give up hope. Even on the last day of the movie’s two week run when it was only showing as a matinee at one in the afternoon, I begged and pleaded to see it. My mother agreed to go, but she cautioned me that we didn’t have enough money to both go to the movies and take the bus. She told me we would have to walk miles in the hot August heat to get to the theatre.

I like to think that in some respects I was a smart kid, but the concept of time in relation to distance and direction still escaped me. When we embarked on our trip (as I sang what I knew of the Pippi theme song like it was “Hi-Ho” from “Snow White” and marching ahead of my mother proudly) I never realized we were going in the completely wrong direction or that by leaving at 11:30 there would have been no way we would have made it for a one o’clock show.

We arrived at a park near the skating rink on Lake Avenue when my mother stopped and sat down on a bench. She was clearly exhausted, and we had already walked a great distance.

“C’mon mom! We’re gonna’ miss Pippi!” I remember tugging at her shirt sleeve as I said this.

“Oh sweetie,” she said almost breathlessly, “I don’t think we are going to make it to see her today.”

“But mooooooooooooooommmm. Today is the last day.”

“I know. Let’s just play at the park today. It’s so nice out. There are swings. You like swings.”

It’s true. I did and still do like swings, as many girls I have dated and gone to a park with can attest to. Swings, however, didn’t change the fact that I knew my mother had lied to me. I could tell from the look on her face and lack of purse that she planned this from the start. I was so upset and petulant that I didn’t even care that I was at one of my favourite parks.

“Swings suck mom!” I said as I crossed my arms and began to stare at the ground. I teared up slightly, but that was mostly out of selfishness.

My mother placed her head in her hands and openly wept in the middle of the park. I realized I had gone too far. It wasn’t until I was older that I truly realized how hard she tried, even if her failure were covered by lies.

I placed my hand on her shoulder and apologized. “I’m sorry mom. I do still like swings. Do you want to swing with me?”

She shook her head and opted to keep crying. I began to swing for a bit, but I couldn’t take my eyes off my mother. It looked like rain was coming so we didn’t stay long. I felt too uncomfortable to stay, anyway. When I got off the swings and walked over to her she was repeatedly muttering under her breath about how she tried so hard.

Other than the rain that started to fall I don’t remember the walk home. I do remember my father getting really angry at the both of us and slapping my mother for not bringing an umbrella with us. People walking in the house wet were something he never tolerated. I was sent to my room and punished for my father getting irrationally pissed off like he always did.

I took the Pippi Longstocking books from my bookshelf and tried to read them, but on that day I could just no longer relate to the irrepressible child with a vivid imagination and superhuman strength. If I ever tried the things she did, I would probably be beaten senseless by my father. I cried a lot and shoved them into a dark corner of my toy box; out of sight and never to be read again. My love for childish fantasies seemingly dies that day.

When the movie came out on video, our local video store didn’t carry it, and I didn’t want to press the issue. Even then I was careful to not reopen old wounds.

Now let’s fast forward to the year 2005, after the death of my parents and having to go through far worse pain and heartache than not seeing a movie. I was working as a projectionist at a movie theatre, and one summer as part of the Free Family Film Festival (or FFFF as it was called), we managed to get a print of “The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking.” Part of me really wanted to either come in early or stay after hours to watch it, but work and life got in the way and for reasons I don’t quite remember it just never happened.

But after that day, it rekindled my wanting to see this movie that I only got to see brief clips of. It didn’t seem like it had aged very well at all.

And now in 2008, for the film’s 20^th anniversary, I have finally sat down and watched it.

Speaking as my adult self, I now wish I hadn’t.

The film opens with the same ridiculously catchy theme song I remembered from my youth, but already my adult mind knows there is something cold, crass, and commercial about the whole affair. The opening credits last forever and show some of the most stereotypical painted portraits I have ever seen open a film: Australians do everything upside-down and with kangaroos, people in cold climates all ice fish and shill with penguins, and south Asians all work in the rice fields. Come to think of it, that might not be that removed from the books at all. It was also kind of like watching “North” all over again only shorter and less painful.

Right from the opening scene my nostalgia meter shut off and I know I am in way over my fucking head. We are introduced to Pippolita Delacatesso Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim’s Daughter Longstocking (although “Mackrelmint Ephraim’s Daughter” is dropped in this version) on her father’s pirate ship. It is apparent from the pranks she play son the ship and her general attitude that this version of Pippi is not so much irrepressible, but an enormous pain in the ass.

It also doesn’t help that the movie uses quick editing cuts like its fucking “Armageddon.” We are given no useful information about just who Pippi is before the ship is caught in a storm and she is separated from her father. When they go overboard, it is in a scene so poorly put together, that it goes like this: brief shot of the ship, cut to the monkey, cut to a random volcano, cut to the horse, cut to a shot of lightning. All I can think of was “what the fuck am I watching?”

In a long bit of exposition for a drowning man amidst chaos, Pippi’s father tells her to build a raft and find his house known as Villa Villacula. Mr Neilson (the monkey) and Alfonso (the horse) will take care of her and know how to get there.

From there we are whisked off to some small town with no name where Pippi ends up. Two kids, Tommy and Annika, walk by the house and bemoan the lack of having friends next door. Well, faster than you can say “Pippi Longstocking is coming into your town,” the kids are hanging out with Pippi; having pancake fights and scrubbing floors with brushes attached to roller skates.

I must admit that pancake fights and skating around the kitchen is still the perfect prescription for getting out of a funk, but does everything in the movies need a shitty song to go along with it? Veteran Disney director and Skywalker namesake Ken Annakin seems to think so. These songs aren’t even slightly good. They might be catchy but lyrically I feel like I am listening to Diddy (or whatever he calls himself these days) rapping to two year olds.

The father of the two children (played by Denis Dugan, who would go on to direct almost every movie Adam Sandler has made) doesn’t approve of Pippi and is unwittingly helping a shady realtor subtly named Mr. Blackheart who is trying to retrieve the gold in the basement of Pippi’s house that she says is from King Solomon’s Mines. Needless to say, Blackheart’s efforts are thwarted by the ever resourceful Pippi.

One day, Pippi strolls into town singing her own theme song while it plays in the background just to hammer home the shitty nature of this movie. Upon her arrival she meets up with the kids from the “home for children who have no parents” (and probably want to learn other good stuff, too). Tommy and Annika even point out, quite lovingly, that no one wants them.

After buying the orphans ice cream and candy she turns the kids into a marching band, closes off the streets to have an ice cream fight and the chief of police (played by John C. Reilly in a really bit part) just smiles and watches the whole thing. The head of the orphanage is nonplussed, however, when she discovers Pippi is living by herself and demands Pippi come to live at the orphanage.

At this point, where there should probably be a SPOILER ALERT, it might seem like I am just listing off everything that happens in the movie. There really isn’t much else I can so since much like “Pootie Tang” this film has no plot at all and is just a bunch of random situations with nothing to hold them together. I had another two pages where I map out the rest of the movie, but there really isn’t much point in that, so I will just point out the other key flaws of the film.

1. It is completely disingenuous. Pippi was a magical person in the books, but this movie is so cynical that it has the audacity to suggest that the stories and adventures that she tells the kids are huge lies and no one should believe her.
2. The story has little to nothing to do with the books or even the 5 Swedish films that were made about Pippi. It might as well have been named Sally Anygirl, since instead of staying true to Pippi; the filmmakers try far too hard to make her an 8 year old version of Ferris Beuler. (Actually, the Swedish movies are pretty terrible from what I hear. True Pippi enthusiasts will tell you the only good version of the books came from the only aired in Canada animated series.)
3. In “Thank You for Smoking” Nick Naylor questions the logic of having cigarettes on a space ship in a movie fearing they will explode in an all oxygen environment. He is told not to worry and everything can be fixed by a simple line of dialog: “Thank god we invented the ‘whatever’ device.”

Well, the “whatever device” is brought out far too many times in this movie and it really is the film’s biggest annoyance. When the kids want to go home after running away with Pippi in a homemade autogyro, the kids say the autogyro has sunk in a swamp. I didn’t even know they were near a fucking swamp. When Pippi is gone, Mr. Blackheart stays away because he is told someone is guarding the house. Pippi rides on a fire engine, says it is the greatest thing she has ever done, and we don’t see it. There was a fire engine used earlier in the movie! What, you could only afford it for one fucking day? You couldn’t have shot it then? And if you did and it was so important to have that line in the film, why did you cut it? It is a very simple to see story problem: don’t tell the audience something happened; show them.

In the last 15 minutes of the film the poor editing shows through even more as the film seems to be racing to the finish line. It sets up no less than four subplots with two new characters and none of it goes anywhere at all. The film even ends abruptly with a montage and almost nothing is resolved.

I sat there, mouth slightly agape at what I just saw. That was fucking terrible on both a literary and filmmaking level. It felt like Pippi by way of a focus group and a corporate committee. Then after they were done, the film was handed to the most incompetent editor on the face of the earth with a mandate that the film could only be 100 minutes long.

After the shock wore off, I got up from my chair and got a drink. I talked to a friend about what I just did and how I felt about this movie I had waited the better part of my life to watch. She understood my frustration and said maybe it was for the best that I hadn’t seen it until now.

That night I when I went to bed it hit me. While the movie is undoubtedly terrible, I can’t say it is best left forgotten. I have too many memories tied to it and it made me think happily about my mother again for another night. The last thing I thought before going to sleep was that I would have loved it as an undiscerning child. Despite its shoddy craftsmanship, it is still a movie made to entertain kids. Not cynical, world weary twenty-somethings.

But in hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t make my mother sit through it.

Verdict: Middle of the road.