Niko the Way to the Stars

MAGMA Pictures, an ambitious Galway-based outfit, has sold this animated Danish children's film to exhibitors all over the world. Good for them. You may, however, prefer to celebrate their achievement from some place other than the stalls.

Niko the Way to the Stars, though good-natured and morally uplifting, is really only suitable as punishment for naughty children (though it's parents who may suffer the most.) Drawing liberally from The Jungle Book, The Lion Kingand My Big Book of Lazy Cliches, the plot follows a young reindeer - child of a deserted mom - as he travels northwards in search of his dad.

Niko hopes the dead-beat caribou, who is currently working as one of Santa's propulsion units, will teach his son the secret of wingless flight. Along the way, he encounters a friendly flying squirrel, a white thing (Vole? Mink?) with a Dixie accent and some irritating wolves constructed from boringly regular polyhedrons.

It may seem churlish to complain that such a film consistently flouts its own shaky internal logic, but today's children, accustomed to Pixar's masterpieces and the glorious madness of SpongeBob SquarePants, do notice such things and will (quite rightly) make their feelings known to any accompanying guardian.

What's that strange pink poodle doing here? Why do some of the reindeer appear to be Dutch homosexuals? What's with the psychedelic light show that accompanies Santa's travels? You'd better have the answers ready.