Terkel in Trouble

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Terkel in Trouble
Directed by	Kresten Vestbjerg Andersen Thorbjørn Christoffersen Stefan Fjeldmark
Produced by	Trine Heidegaard Thomas Heinesen
Written by	Anders Matthesen Mette Heeno
Starring	Anders Matthesen
Music by	Bo Rasmussen
Editing by	Per Risager Mikael R. Ryelund Martin Wichmann Andersen
Distributed by	Nordisk Film
Release date(s)	2004-04-02
Running time	77 min.
Country	Denmark
Language	Danish
IMDb profile

Terkel in Trouble (Danish: Terkel i knibe) is a Danish animated film which, despite it's childish characters, is intended for an adult audience. The film has been translated to Norwegian, Swedish, English, German and Italian.

1 Plot summary
2 Awards
3 Notes and references
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Terkel is a normal boy who's attending 6A at a primary school together with his best friend Jason, who carries an iron pipe with him at all times. Terkel and Jason are playing a gameboy in the schoolyard one day when a strange man in a green panda sweater approaches them. The man, Gunnar, tells Terkel that he has sat on a spider. "Nothing to worry about. They're just jeans. They can be washed." Terkel says and after that the nightmare starts...

Terkel's teacher gets fatally run over, and the class's new teacher is the strange Gunnar. Terkel's parents get married and the two "bad boys" in his class, Sten and Saki, manipulate Terkel to steal beer for them. When Terkel's uncle Stuart notices, he beats up Sten and Saki, for which they blame Terkel, so they begin bullying him, but no-one seems to want to help him.

One day the fat girl in the class, Doris, approaches Terkel with a love letter. When Sten and Saki notice, they start teasing the two of them, calling them a couple. Terkel is torn: hewants to defend Doris, but instead, because he'd rather save face in front of the cool kids, he says "I'm certainly not in love with a fat cow like that!" Doris gets so upset that she jumps out the window in the fourth floor and dies. After that Terkel starts receiving deathtreats: on his desk, painted on the ceiling of his room, on a stone which breaks his window, in his notebook... His parents aren't of any help - his mother tells him about all the diseases he might develop and his father only seem capable of one word: "No".

Gunnar decides to arrange a school camping trip to study salamanders, but Terkel doesn't want to go. He begs his parents to let him stay at home, but they refuse. On the bus he is about to sit down with his best friend Jason when Sten and Saki invite him to sit down with them instead. Terkel does so, and Jason becomes angry. When they get to the forest where they are going to study the salamanders, Sten and Saki want him to sleep in their tent - he does. He gets a shock when Saki comes to the tent with a black eye, telling him that Jason has beaten him up. Terkel thinks that Jason is acting strangely aloof, and Sten tells him that Doris was Jason's sister. Terkel is terrified, and thinks that all the death treats were from Jason, because he caused his sister to commit suicide. When they're going to bed, Terkel finds a dead cat in his sleeping bag and he receives a message from Jason's phone on his phone which says "I'm coming to kill you." Sten and Saki advices Terkel to tell Gunnar, so he does. He insists that Gunnar come with him into the woods where he explains everything. Then he says "I'm gonna call Jason right now and say that I have told you everything." Gunnar protests but Terkel does so and to his horror, he hears ringing sounds come from Gunnar's pocket. It turns out all the death treats and messages had been from Gunnar as a revenge for Terkel sitting on the spider when he first met them. A thrilling race in the woods commences, and he is eventually saved by Jason, who finally puts his iron bar to use.

[edit] Awards

Terkel in Trouble was nominated for several awards in 2005, winning the Audience Award, the Best Children/Family Film, the Best Original Score, the Best Song and Best Sound awards at the Robert Festival, where it was also nominated for best screenplay^[1]. It also won Best Danish Film at the Bodil Awards^[1] and was nominated for Best Feature at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival^{[citation needed]}.