Director: Ben Stassen, Benjamin Mousquet
Distributor: Belga Home Video
Duration: 91 minutes
Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness (DVD) – Movie Review
When it comes to animated movies, the current market is quite saturated with films that have half-decent ideas but end up being very boring pieces of entertainment. When we recently saw the trailer for Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness (original: Hopper et le Hamster des Ténèbres), we were quite entertained by what we saw. We loved the concept of a movie that revolves around a character who is half rabbit half chicken, and the adventure-oriented scenes gave us the impression of an Indiana Jones-inspired adventure film. We were given a DVD copy for our review, and for the most part, we were quite entertained.
Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness revolves completely around Chickenhare (Jordan Tartakow), who is somewhat of an oddity in his community. His father found him when he was just a baby, and for some reason, Chickenhare is a hybrid between a hare and a chicken. Due to this, he is often bullied by other children, and Chickenhare constantly wishes he was ‘normal’. To prove that he is more than just an odd-looking creature, he decides he also wants to become an adventurer and make a name for himself. He hopes that by doing this, the other animals will accept him for who he is, while he also hopes that he will grow to accept himself as well. Things don’t go as planned, and when he accidentally releases the evil Lapin (Danny Fehsenfeld) from prison, Chickenhare will have to reach the legendary treasured Hamster of Darkness before Lapin does.
While the story is quite likable, we found the flow and pacing of the movie a bit odd. For the most part, you get the necessary information to understand what is going on, but at times the story takes weird leaps that feel unnecessary and some scenes actually felt a bit too long-winded or useless. Nonetheless, these scenes will probably still end up being entertaining to many younger viewers, but the movie could have chosen to have a bit more background story for some characters and remove a few of the action scenes. That being said, the movie is still quite entertaining and it doesn’t really feel as if it needed a much shorter duration.
Acting performances were very qualitative in the film and most actors clearly have enough experience bringing their characters to life. Movies such as this often result in stereotypes or overacting, and that also wasn’t the case here. Most voices were very pleasant to listen to, and many character voices did feel appropriate for the animal they were linked to. We did notice that Joe Ochman’s character, Abe, sometimes had a more noticeable accent during certain scenes compared to other scenes where the accent would be pretty much gone.
The DVD version of Chickenhare comes with a few extra trailers of other animated movies but also a very interesting ‘Making of’ featurette. We were actually quite impressed with the special feature that revolved around the creative process behind the scenes. In this feature, you could see how the movie was shaped, how the storyboards looked like, how the textures were applied, as well as a few other details that went into the creation of this cutesy animated film. While we would have perhaps loved a few more extras that were specifically designed for children, we very much appreciate what was included with this physical copy.
Conclusion
Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness is a story all about adventure and learning to accept yourself for who you are. As a whole, we very much enjoyed the film thanks to its appealing story, the decent animations, as well as the quality acting performances. We only sometimes felt that the pacing and flow were a bit off, but other than that, this is an enjoyable film for young and old and it will certainly bring a bit of fun and joy to a relaxing family evening.
Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness (DVD) - Movie Review,
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