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TAIKAMERIROSVOJA: A Tuuri Hotakainen and Dave Strider Production
Though of course, the opening credits attribute the movie to "Kaino-Vieno Hollola;" no sense spoiling the fact that this is not a real movie before the cast and setting make that obvious.
The film opens with a beautiful panning shot of some ruins carved into a stone. The truly awesome-sounding original piano score hopefully distracts from the fact that it's a leftover cardboard display from the Recolle Museum, but as the scene transitions into a beautiful panning shot of Recolle's beach it probably gives the game away. Whatever you can say about any of the acting that follows, the camerawork and soundtrack continue to be amazingly good throughout the entire movie.
The movie is set up as a series of vignettes following an ensemble cast, with the common thread being the appearance of Kokko, the legendary Finnish firebird, who is mostly accompanied by a travelling merchant slash scholar slash mage. There seems to be some intended symbolism here-- Kokko appears to occasionally represent a character's dark side, but also seems to be a character in and of itself, interacting with the rest of the cast.
After a mysterious shot of Kokko following our merchant/scholar/mage on his journey, we see the backstory of Captain Meri Rossakunikakakki. A coffin (a wagon) hurtles towards a barrel on the pirate ship, crashing into it and starting a slow-spreading fire as Captain Meri emerges from the flames, followed by a screeching Kokko. The flames part around her as she surveys her new domain. "'Epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän?'" she says, in what is definitely Tuuri's voice, before smirking and launching into a battle sequence against a number of extras. She cuts off one of their heads and stuffs the severed head into a canon. There are severed heads everywhere. This is the backstory of our main hero.
The scene changes to show a blindfolded pirate, standing imposingly on the deck, accompanied by a weird parrot? "'Merirosvoutta on esiintynyt miltei kaikilla merillä,'" he says to himself, as a young pirate swaggers around singing what sounds like a Finnish translation of Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life For Me), mangled by a thick British accent.
A Navy ship approaches on the horizon. Heading the Navy ship is a young, ambitious captain who seems dedicated to ridding the seas of piracy. Another battle scene, until the captain finds herself facing off against a magic pirate, whose appearance on screen marks the moment when Tuuri officially stopped trying to pass this off as a real movie.
"Ajattele sitä asiaa vaan ihan lunkisti äläkä hermoile," the Navy captain says, coolly and mercilessly, pointing her sword at the pirate. A gust of magic, represented by gold glitter, spills towards him, but it's as though there's an invisible bubble surrounding and protecting the pirate. "Hyvää syntymäpäivää!" he shouts in defiance as the magic parts way around him, and the two square off to do battle. With a cry of "En guarde!" from the Navy captain and "Äääää!" from the pirate, they meet in battle, sword versus magic scarf.
We also follow Rosa de la Calavera, a pirate who changes sides throughout the movie, and her cryptid Cordera. Rosa seems to only care about money, but Kokko the Firebird looms behind her, as if to imply that her greed only brings her one step closer to ruin. Towards the middle of the movie, she and Captain Meri team up to defend her cryptid from a group of bad guys, including a threatening pirate whose eyepatch actually seems to fit him. After a frankly bizarre scene where everyone throws off their capes and watches them sink into the water (most likely symbolizing something, though it's anyone's thought as to what) there is a very cool fight scene full of copious flips and acrobatics, though it's not hard to notice that the stunt double seems to be the same person for all of the characters.
"Awateg faalit piou harpun nakkamel!!" Captain Meri screams, leaping down from the lookout platform of the ship to fight a sea monster, played by an inflatable dolphin toy, with the help of her first mate, played by Tuuri herself. They find themselves separated from the others and wash up on shore with a group of friendly, taco-loving villagers, who are threatened by Captain Meri's arch-nemesis of the moment, a guy and his well-behaved German Shepherd. "Ehkä sinun pitäisi... Ruhe bekommen," he says, before an extremely tense standoff begins-- someone give these two their Oscars, because their dramatic tension feels real.
If there can be said to be a single antagonist in the movie, it would be Davy Jones, represented by a terrifying rabbit mask that sometimes takes up the entire screen. In the climax of the movie, Captain Meri faces off against Davy Jones after conquering the secret of the Phoenix Balls (thanks, presumably, to Kokko the Firebird). The two enemies stand off on opposite sides of a bridge, until Captain Meri brings the bridge down, sacrificing herself to defeat the evil from the deep. "Kalsarikännit," she whispers as the camera pans up into the grey sky, a single shot of Kokko looking knowingly at the camera before the shot fades to black.
Surprising absolutely no one, the credits are filled with familiar names.
The film opens with a beautiful panning shot of some ruins carved into a stone. The truly awesome-sounding original piano score hopefully distracts from the fact that it's a leftover cardboard display from the Recolle Museum, but as the scene transitions into a beautiful panning shot of Recolle's beach it probably gives the game away. Whatever you can say about any of the acting that follows, the camerawork and soundtrack continue to be amazingly good throughout the entire movie.
The movie is set up as a series of vignettes following an ensemble cast, with the common thread being the appearance of Kokko, the legendary Finnish firebird, who is mostly accompanied by a travelling merchant slash scholar slash mage. There seems to be some intended symbolism here-- Kokko appears to occasionally represent a character's dark side, but also seems to be a character in and of itself, interacting with the rest of the cast.
After a mysterious shot of Kokko following our merchant/scholar/mage on his journey, we see the backstory of Captain Meri Rossakunikakakki. A coffin (a wagon) hurtles towards a barrel on the pirate ship, crashing into it and starting a slow-spreading fire as Captain Meri emerges from the flames, followed by a screeching Kokko. The flames part around her as she surveys her new domain. "'Epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkäänköhän?'" she says, in what is definitely Tuuri's voice, before smirking and launching into a battle sequence against a number of extras. She cuts off one of their heads and stuffs the severed head into a canon. There are severed heads everywhere. This is the backstory of our main hero.
The scene changes to show a blindfolded pirate, standing imposingly on the deck, accompanied by a weird parrot? "'Merirosvoutta on esiintynyt miltei kaikilla merillä,'" he says to himself, as a young pirate swaggers around singing what sounds like a Finnish translation of Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life For Me), mangled by a thick British accent.
A Navy ship approaches on the horizon. Heading the Navy ship is a young, ambitious captain who seems dedicated to ridding the seas of piracy. Another battle scene, until the captain finds herself facing off against a magic pirate, whose appearance on screen marks the moment when Tuuri officially stopped trying to pass this off as a real movie.
"Ajattele sitä asiaa vaan ihan lunkisti äläkä hermoile," the Navy captain says, coolly and mercilessly, pointing her sword at the pirate. A gust of magic, represented by gold glitter, spills towards him, but it's as though there's an invisible bubble surrounding and protecting the pirate. "Hyvää syntymäpäivää!" he shouts in defiance as the magic parts way around him, and the two square off to do battle. With a cry of "En guarde!" from the Navy captain and "Äääää!" from the pirate, they meet in battle, sword versus magic scarf.
We also follow Rosa de la Calavera, a pirate who changes sides throughout the movie, and her cryptid Cordera. Rosa seems to only care about money, but Kokko the Firebird looms behind her, as if to imply that her greed only brings her one step closer to ruin. Towards the middle of the movie, she and Captain Meri team up to defend her cryptid from a group of bad guys, including a threatening pirate whose eyepatch actually seems to fit him. After a frankly bizarre scene where everyone throws off their capes and watches them sink into the water (most likely symbolizing something, though it's anyone's thought as to what) there is a very cool fight scene full of copious flips and acrobatics, though it's not hard to notice that the stunt double seems to be the same person for all of the characters.
"Awateg faalit piou harpun nakkamel!!" Captain Meri screams, leaping down from the lookout platform of the ship to fight a sea monster, played by an inflatable dolphin toy, with the help of her first mate, played by Tuuri herself. They find themselves separated from the others and wash up on shore with a group of friendly, taco-loving villagers, who are threatened by Captain Meri's arch-nemesis of the moment, a guy and his well-behaved German Shepherd. "Ehkä sinun pitäisi... Ruhe bekommen," he says, before an extremely tense standoff begins-- someone give these two their Oscars, because their dramatic tension feels real.
If there can be said to be a single antagonist in the movie, it would be Davy Jones, represented by a terrifying rabbit mask that sometimes takes up the entire screen. In the climax of the movie, Captain Meri faces off against Davy Jones after conquering the secret of the Phoenix Balls (thanks, presumably, to Kokko the Firebird). The two enemies stand off on opposite sides of a bridge, until Captain Meri brings the bridge down, sacrificing herself to defeat the evil from the deep. "Kalsarikännit," she whispers as the camera pans up into the grey sky, a single shot of Kokko looking knowingly at the camera before the shot fades to black.
Surprising absolutely no one, the credits are filled with familiar names.