CineBad!!!

This is the story of Hans Christian Andersen (Danny Kaye), as he keeps singing to us (“I’m Hans Christian Andersen” is guaranteed to get stuck in your head for weeks). Hans is the village cobbler in a town so provincial, kites fly themselves. Hans delights the village children with his stories and songs so much they habitually ditch school to hang out with him and his self-flying kites. Unfortunately, the village parents are pretty irritated with this whole arrangement, and plan to force Hans and Peter, his young apprentice, out of town. Luckily Peter catches wind of this plan and is able to make Hans move to Wonderful Wonderful Copenhagen, Lovely old Girl of the Sea, before the crowd runs him out of town.

After many more songs and dance numbers, Hans gets thrown in jail for defiling a statue, and then gets a job to make a pair of ballet shoes for a whiny high-maintenance French ballerina named Doro (Jeanmaire) who is married to a harried perfectionist (Granger). Of course Hans falls in love with Doro. Anyway, Hans’s obsession with this prima donna causes there to be lots of ballet musical numbers– don’t miss Hans’s and Doro’s fantasy ballet wedding! Doro’s anti-gravitational see-through tutu wedding dress is extremely impressive!

Meanwhile, Peter the apprentice gets jealous of Hans’s affection for Doro and plots to put a stop to his fawning for her. Unfortunately, because Peter is an insufferable passive aggressive, he doesn’t let on what his problem is, and spends the second half of the film acting mysteriously bitchy. Hans writes the ballet “The Little Mermaid” for Doro and we get to see the entire ballet performed. You really get your money’s worth out of this film! you get a musical and a ballet for the price of one!

Basically the point of this story is that Hans is childlike himself, which is how he is able to tell such great stories. Unfortunately, it causes him to act retarded, which is why people are always making fun of him. However, whenever there is a small child around, Hans is able to turn a frown upside down with his stories. For example, when he is in jail, he looks out of the barred window, and sees a little girl playing in the nice garden outside the jail (aren’t all jails this nicely landscaped?). He paints a face on his thumb and proceeds to sing her a story about “Thumbelina.” The little girl stares transfixed at his thumb for the duration of the song. How many kids could you pull that stunt off on today!

Then there’s another classic moment when Hans takes aside a little bald boy whom all the other kids pick on. He tells him the story of the Ugly Duckling. He doesn’t mince words at describing how ugly the duckling is, and how much all of the other ducks hate it. Personally, if someone had told me this story when kids picked on me in grade school, I probably would have slugged them, since it is implied that I would have to grow up before people would stop picking on me. However, I’m grown-up, and people still pick on me…maybe I’ll reach swanhood sometime in my 30s. Let’s hope the bald kid had better luck!