The Ugly Duckling and Me!
DIR: Michael Hegner, Karsten Kiilerich • WRI: Michael Hegner, Mark Hodkinson, Karsten Kiilerich • PROD: Moe Honan, Irene Sparre Hjorthøj • ED: Thorbjørn Christoffersen, Virgil Kastrup, Per Risager • CAST: Morgan Jones, Kim Larney, Paul Tylack, Anna Olson, Gary Hetzler, Danna Davis, Barbara Bergin, Michelle Read, Hilary Cahill

I have to admit that I’ve never liked the Ugly Duckling fairytale. The underlying moral seems to be don’t worry if you’re not accepted by those around you, soon a magical act will happen which will cause you to be warmly welcomed for the very same reasons that you were once cruelly rejected. Luckily, then, The Ugly Duckling and Me!, a new pan-European animation co-production, takes a cavalier approach to adapting the Hans Christian Anderson tale. In reality this is far more a film about the eponymous ‘me’ than about the Ugly Duckling. Much like Withnail exists as a counterpoise for the ultimately more interesting ‘I’, so also the gangly, unpresentable, and unfortunately named ‘Ugly’ exists as a foil for the much more entertaining, though equally unimaginatively named, ‘Ratso’, the selfish ‘Me’.

When the story opens, Ratso is hewing a living as the theatrical agent of a hapless, eternally ungrateful worm named Wesley. With more than a passing nod to The Blues Brothers, a jilted fiancé appears on the scene looking for revenge. Our hero, Ratso, takes off across the countryside, all the time being tailed menacingly by Phyllis, the jilted lover, and her gang of beefy brothers. Seeking refuge, he manages to hole up in a secluded chicken coop, posing as the ‘father’ of an orphaned egg out of which Ugly soon hatches. Ever the opportunist, Ratso seeks to exploit his ghastly ‘son’, and so drags him to a carnival-slash-freakshow on the far side of an ominous forest. Ratso and Ugly find much adventure along the way, as well as an unlikely love-interest. But what also happens, and what ultimately saves this from being little more than a rehashed, modernizing of a somewhat dubious fairytale, is that Ratso learns the value of friends and learns to not exploit the good nature and temporarily unpleasant exterior of his adopted offspring. Via a fight to save Ugly’s life, Ratso undergoes some much-needed personal development and the film avoids the inferior moral of the original fable.

Aidan Beatty
(Read biog here)

Rated G (see IFCO website for details)
The Ugly Duckling and Me! is released on 6th July 2007.
The Ugly Duckling and Me! – Official website