MovieChat Forums > The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking (1988) Discussion > just a couple things...

just a couple things...

posted 13 years ago by mybagisgreen
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the people cast in this movie didn't cast themselves. how so many people can talk so much trash about a 13 year old girl is beyond my comprehension. you may not enjoy her interpretation of pippi, but i did.

i didn't know about pippi until i saw this movie as a kid, and she gave me hope.

i think that's what pippi was all about. hope.... believing... blah blah blah.

yes, this is such an americanized version of the original version that so many people are familiar with. but there's different interpretations to every story. you're not always going to like everything, are you? i just don't understand how people can say such cruel things about such a young girl. and her career never took off because of this.

i find her to be very entertaining, charismatic, watchable, talented...

and i bet when she signed on to this film, her parents and agents and everyone around her was like "yo tami, this is just the beginning!" yeah. the beginning of the realization of what hollywood is. SHE WAS A CHILD.

i guess my point is, is that when i was five years old, this movie meant a lot to me. it meant the world to me. it made me believe in things that people always told me were never possible, even though i've discovered (i'm 27 now) that they ARE... it's just that the people who told me they weren't possible were too afraid to believe in the un-normal.

if it bothered you so much, please don't spend the time to make me, or all the people involved with the film, feel bad for enjoying it. open your feelings up to a discussion, but don't say stuff like "this freaking sucks and it's the worst movie ever" without at least backing yourself up. it's obviously not the worst movie ever.

i'm glad that this film was made, and if i ever have kids, i would show it to them. there aren't movies made nowadays that promote being individual against diversity, and show that you need to believe in yourself more than anything!!

"we'll come out on top like we always do!"

[–] ryuuseipro 13 years ago

Pippi Longstocking is, by far, my favorite superheroine.

As far as movie/TV adaptations of the original books go (there have been 7 to date), I definitely think the 1969 TV/movie series starring Inger Nilsson is the best, but I enjoyed this movie, too. I will admit, despite the liberties taken with the source material (which since forced Astrid Lindgren's estate to maintain a creative death-grip on the Pippi franchise), they picked very beautiful locales, and the cinematography is bright and colorful, unlike most films today (which rely on lazy color grading)! It hearkens back to movies like the 1980 POPEYE (which I enjoyed, even as a kid). The theme song was really good, and the songs, while dated, are rather charming. And sure, Tami Erin was a bit old for the role (Pippi was 9 in the books), but she otherwise had the chops for the role. So if there was anything objectionable about the film, it wasn't her fault.

Call it watered-down, PC, whatever, but it's certainly not the worst, IMHO. That honor goes to the Nelvana animated movie/series from 1997. It was torturously pedestrian, and didn't even try to be exciting. Even some kids I know found it painful to sit through! To its credit, it does follow the book more closely, but why did Nelvana have to do so in the most boring and mediocre way possible? The books deserved better. I read all three books (PIPPI LONGSTOCKING, PIPPI GOES ON BOARD, and PIPPI IN THE SOUTH SEAS), and loved them. They're among my favorite books ever. I think they're the best and probably most extreme versions of the story, and find them to be just as compelling as any comic-book or animated series.

Speaking of animated adaptations, famous Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki (who's a huge Pippi fan) was going to do one back in 1971, but the project was canceled when he couldn't get the rights. (A Miyazaki art book from 1983 has beautiful production art from the aborted project, and he nailed it perfectly!) I seriously think Miyazaki deserves another chance, as he would've done the best animated Pippi ever. Otherwise, if not Miyazaki, an animated Pippi would really have to be a bit more like the cartoon series THE MIGHTY B! (one of my favorite cartoons, and my favorite Nickelodeon cartoon next to REN & STIMPY). I even thought that Bessie Higgenbottom, the show's heroine, might have been inspired by Pippi, as she shares some remarkably similar traits.

It could've been worse; Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich could've made a Pippi Longstocking in name only (she'd be a regular modern-day junior high-school student or something), or Saban Entertainment could've taken the original 1969 TV series and cut out footage of Inger Nilsson and the other Swedish actors, and replace them with inferior actors, while only keeping certain scenes with SPFX and what not. So, I prefer this 1988 movie to such a worst-case scenario.