Flåklypa Grand Prix

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Flåklypa Grand Prix

Directed by	Ivo Caprino
Produced by	Ivo Caprino
Written by	Kjell Aukrust Ivo Caprino
Starring	Frank Robert Kari Simonsen Toralv Maurstad Rolf Just Nilsen Harald-Heide Steen Jr. Helge Reiss Wenche Foss Per Theodor Haugen Henki Kolstad Leif Juster
Music by	Bent Fabricius Bjerre
Editing by	Ivo Caprino
Distributed by	Sandrew Metronome
Release date(s)	August 28, 1975
Running time	88 min
Country	Norway
Language	Norwegian
IMDb profile

Flåklypa Grand Prix (released under the English title "Pinchcliffe Grand Prix") is a Norwegian stop motion-animated feature film directed by Ivo Caprino. It was released in 1975 and is based on characters from a series of books by Norwegian cartoonist and author Kjell Aukrust. It is the most widely-seen Norwegian film of all time, having sold some 5.5 million tickets since its release to a population which currently numbers just 4.6 million.

1 Plot
2 History
3 Miscellanea
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In the town of Flåklypa, the inventor Reodor Felgen lives with his animal friends Ludvig (a nervous, pessimistic and melancholic porqupine) and Solan (a cheerful and optimistic bird). Reodor works as a bicycle repairman, though he spends most of his time inventing weird Rube Goldberg-like contraptions. One day, the trio discover that one of Reodore's former assistants, Rudolph Blodstrupmoen, has stolen his design for a race car engine and has become a world champion Formula 1 driver. Sonny secures funding from an Arab oil sheik who happens to be vacationing in Flåklypa, and the trio build a gigantic racing car to enter the race, Il Tempo Gigante - a fabulous construction with two extremely big engines, a body made out of copper, a spinning radar and its own blood bank (the radar turns out to be useful when Blodstrupmoen starts engaging in smoke warfare during the race). Reodor ends up winning despite Blodstrupmoen's attempts at sabotage.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] History

In 1970, Ivo Caprino and his small team of collaborators started work on a 25-minute-long TV special, which would eventually become Flåklypa Grand Prix. The TV special was a collection of sketches based on Aukrust's books, with no real story line. After 1.5 years of work, it was decided that it didn't really work as a whole, so production on the TV special was stopped (with the exception of some very short clips, no material from it has ever been seen by the public), and Caprino and Aukrust instead wrote a screenplay for a feature film using the characters and environments that had already been built.

The film was made in 3.5 years by a team of approximately 5 people. Caprino directed and animated; Bjarne Sandemose (Caprino's principal collaborator throughout his career) built most of the props, sets and cars and was in charge of the technical aspects of making the film; Ingeborg Riiser designed the puppets and Gerd Alfsen made the costumes and props. Charley Patey was the camera man.

When it came out in 1975, Flåklypa Grand Prix was an enormous success in Norway, selling 1 million tickets in its first year of release. It remains the biggest box office hit of all time in Norway (Caprino Studios claim it has sold 5.5 million tickets to date) and was also released in many other countries. The movie was shown in cinemas every day of the week for 28 years, from 1975 until 2003 - mainly in Norway, Moscow and Tokyo.

[edit] Miscellanea

Model of Il Tempo Gigante

A real Il tempo gigante car was used to promote the film, e.g. driving around the Hockenheimring between races
An English-dubbed version of the film was released in the United States, where it was called Pinchcliffe Grand Prix. The names of the characters were anglified - Reodor Felgen became Theodor Rimspoke, Solan became Sonny Sonny Duckworth, Ludvig became Lambert and Rudolph Blodstrupmoen became Rudolph Gore-Slimey. This version featured the voice of well-known Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker.
In 2005 a new, digitally restored DVD was released which featured soundtracks and subtitles in 5 languages including English. A previous DVD was released in 2001.
The pod race in Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace borrows many elements from Flåklypa, which, according to the Internet Movie Database [1], was in turn inspired by the movie Grand Prix.
In 2001 a computer game based on the film was released. The game was produced by Caprino's son Remo, while his grandson Mario was lead programmer. The lead designer was Joe Dever.
A running joke in Norway was that only two memorable movie creations originated in the country: Flåklypa and the Battle of Hoth scene from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
Since Ivo Caprino was a perfectionist, the animated band plays the right notes in correct timing to the soundtrack.
The license plate "HB 4596" is a reference to moonshine. HB stands for "hjemmebrent" (home distilled) and 45 and 96 are alcohol by volume. 45% is what shop alcohol is and 96% is what moonshiners aim for.
The movie inspired a young Christian von Koenigsegg to one day build the supercar Koenigsegg CCR
The last name of the sheik Ben Redic Fy Fazan is a Norwegian euphemism of a profanity.
The featured chess scene was used as an example of particularly clever play in Grandmaster Simen Agdestein's introductory book of chess.
The movie aired each Christmas Eve in Norway for several years (until a change of channel from NRK to TV_2_(Norway) changed the airing date to December 23). Kjell Aukrust passed away on December 24 2002. (In Scandinavia, Christmas Eve is more important than Christmas Day.)