Free Jimmy represents more than Norway's first serious foray into computer animation; Free Jimmy is a worthwhile addition to a landscape already saturated with animated feature films. The off-color comedic crime caper is the story of Jimmy the elephant's journey through escape, recovery, and ultimate redemption, as told through intersecting character and storyline development.
Free Jimmy's story-telling power comes from its remarkable ability to transcend the national cultural barriers that are typically the cause of a foreign film's critical and commercial failure in the United States (does anyone even remember Perfect Blue?). Director Christopher Nielsen overcomes this by using actors whose real lives offer real parallels to the character's they give voice to--like Woody Harrelson, who also lends his voice talents to Grass. Nielsen's characters are broadly specific, providing just enough personal context to introduce universal characteristics and behavioral constants of social types. Because Nielsen does not introduce specific elements of character histories until it is absolutely necessary (an element which, although slightly frustrating initially, contributes to the overall effect of the film, viewers are able to relate to the characters in Free Jimmy to the cast of the characters in their own life.
Harrelson is Roy Arnie, a disaffected American who travels with a rinky-dink Russian circus throughout Eastern Europe. Jim Broadbent's performance as Stromowski, the circus ring-master brings to mind one of the worst pun's ever: Q. What's the difference between an angry circus-owner and a Roman barber? A. One is a raving showman, and the other is a shaving Roman. The circus' main attraction is Jimmy, a haggard-looking elephant who, after years of forced drug-use have turned him into a paranoid and flighty hophead whose behavior is controlled, rather barbarically, with uppers (speed) and downers (h).
Arnie's dream is to one day own and operate a circus of his own; and he's hidden a million dollars worth of heroin in Jimmy to see that this becomes a reality. First he has to get Jimmy out of the circus, so he recruits three burnout-stoners Gaz (Phil Daniels), Odd (Simon Pegg), and Flea (voice of Jim Simpson) to help. Pegg and Simpson are absolutely phenomenal, with Simpson really capturing the nature of a psycho-social addiction to marijuana. As a side note, if you are one of the many Americans who has not yet experienced the awesomeness that is Spaced (which stars Pegg), please do. The heroin, however, is not "actually" Arnie's--belonging instead to Russian gangsters who've enlisted the help of the Lappish (indigeneous North Europeans) mafia, to track down Arnie and Jimmy.
Somewhere along the way we are also introduced to a group of imbecilic animal rights extremists and an alcoholic hunting party, lead by a short-tempered giant whose violent outburst only increase in intensity as he fails to bag his prized moose. When Jimmy escapes, all join in pursuit--of Jimmy and of each other--through the mountains of Norway for their own reasons.
The surreal nature of the film's animation--dark, almost grimy with bright infusions of drug-induced imagery--provides an excellent canvas upon which Nielsen paints a remarkably-subtle and humorous social critique of the motivating forces within the lives of his characters. Overzealous and naive, the animal rights activists act without thinking, causing the needless deaths of the creatures they seek to help. The angry hunter has put so much stock in proving his worth back home by killing a moose that he has forgotten the spirit of fraternity that hunting is supposed to represent. The initial thrills of insane drug use are mitigated by the meaninglessness of life while addicted and the painful process of detoxification.
The "heart" of the film, which is dedicated to director Christopher Nielsen's brother "Jokke," who died of a drug overdose in 2000, is the friendship that forms between Jimmy and his caretaker-friend, the moose, who helps Jimmy despite significant risk to his own life
The film's climactic gun battle and following few scenes find a drug-free Jimmy still unable to escape his pursuers--perhaps an expression of the director's belief that Jokke's ultimate submission to his drug addiction was inevitable and is the nature of the beast. In this vein--that of self-destructiveness--it is only fitting that it is the most fervid of the "animal liberators" that fires the fatal shot.
In short, Free Jimmy is an example of the great film-making and story-telling potential of the visual medium when animated films are allowed to escape the Shrek form of bright or "warm" animation with a child-friendly plot laced with adult innuendos.