| The Adventures of Scamper the Penguin | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Kinjiro Yoshida Gennady Sokolskiy |
| Produced by | Toru Komori Takeo Nishiguchi |
| Written by | Victor Merezhko Eiichi Tachi Shozo Matsuda |
| Narrated by | Alexei Batalov |
| Starring | Svetlana Stepchenko Lyudmila Gnilova Rolan Bykov Elena Sanaeva |
| Music by | Masahito Maruyama |
| Cinematography | Alexander Chekhovsky |
| Studio | Life Work Corp Soyuzmultfilm |
| Release date(s) | 1 January 1986 (Russia) 27 March 1986 (Japan) |
| Running time | 64 minutes |
| Country | Japan Soviet Union |
| Language | Russian |
The Adventures of Scamper the Penguin, known internationally as The Adventures of Lolo the Penguin, is a 1988 Japanese-Soviet co-produced animated feature film about the early life of an Adélie Penguin. It was originally released as a three-part serial.
The film is targeted at a very young audience, although the movie is narrated like a documentary about the life of the penguins during the spring and summer seasons in the Antarctic.
Contents |
The story begins with the end of winter, and the southern ocean showing the aurora australis. A flock of penguins, coming from the north, returns home. The females separate from their mates to go hunt as males build their nests from piles of pebbles. The females return to lay their eggs, only to eventually separate from the males again, whilst the males take care of the eggs. A flock of aggressive seabirds constantly threatens to steal the penguin eggs and raids the nesting grounds while the females are away. A penguin couple named Gilbert and Gracie saves the egg of another family, meanwhile one of their two eggs is stolen from their nest. When Gracie returns Gilbert finally comes clean that one of the eggs he takes from a neighbor nest is not theirs. They return it to the rightful owner and have one egg for themselves.
When the eggs finally hatch, Gilbert (Toto) and Gracie (Lala) receive a new-born penguin baby whom they name Scamper (Lolo), after his tendency to scurry around. Scamper, like any other young penguin, is over-inquisitive and very curious. Together with his best friend Snowflake (Pépé), Scamper goes on many journeys through the wild, learning about the creatures that live in region. He eventually also makes friends with a tame husky puppy called Cowboy, who is on an Antarctican trek with his scientist master.
Eventually, however, Scamper and Snowflake get separated from their home, and faces many dangers such as attacks by seabirds, leopard seals and killer whales. Eventually, they get captured by a large group of poachers, from whom they later escape with the help of a Macaroni Penguin named Louie and an old guard dog on board named Jack.
The young penguins return home, only to find that the poachers have also come to catch all the baby penguins to sell to a zoo; Scamper leads a successful rescue.
The story ends as the winter comes, and the penguins go northward again, now led by Scamper.
The Japanese title of the film is Chiisana Pengin Roro no Bōken (小さなペンギンロロの冒険) and Russian is "Приключе́ния пингвинёнка Лоло́" (Priklyucheniya pingvinyonka Lolo), both literally translate as The Adventures of Small Penguin Lolo. Apart from language, the Russian and Japanese versions are identical.
This film was dubbed into English both in the United Kingdom and in the United States. The UK version was an English dub of the film as originally released; the American version was heavily localised and cuts out most of the violent scenes from the original, including the death of Scamper's father (which is not even mentioned in this version). All of the characters' names are changed, and the score and songs were written by Mark Mercury (credited as "Bullets").