Simon
Pegg has been a pretty busy boy since the release of Shaun of the
Dead, like his directorial cohort, he has been in great demand.
Right now he can be found on the big screen alongside Mr Katie Holmes
in the latest Mission Implausible film, and he’s currently shooting
his next venture, a police action movie called Hot Fuzz, but
an adult animation has brought his talents to the attention of the Cannes
Film Festival jury.
Free Jimmy, the ‘unique CGI animated feature for adult
audiences’ has been selected for the closing ceremony of Critics
Week at the 59th International Festival De Cannes, making it only the
second feature-length animation ever screened during that week.
Written and directed by Christopher Nielsen, the irreverent black comedy
featuring a heady mix of sex, drugs and sawdust, will compete for the
coveted Camera D’Or Prize, the award for the best first feature
film presented in one of Cannes competitive sections (Official Selection,
Director's Fortnight or International Critics Week).
The British/Norwegian co-production from animation house Storm Studio
brings together a star-studded cast including Woody Harrelson, Kyle
MacLachlan, Simon Pegg, Jim Broadbent, Samantha Morton, David Tennant,
Emilia Fox, Phil Daniels, The League of Gentlemen, Kris Marshall, Douglas
Henshall, Jay Simpson and James Cosmo.
Simon Pegg, one of the UK’s hottest comic actor/writers not only
provides one of the movie’s lead voices, but also wrote the English
language script for the film.
Free Jimmy follows the story of four low life anti-heroes Roy
Arnie (Woody Harrelson), Odd (Simon Pegg), Gaz (Phil Daniels) and Flea
(Jay Simpson), who are uprooted from their mean city streets to work
with Ringmaster Stromowski (Jim Broadbent) in a touring Russian circus
in terminal decline. The star attraction is Jimmy, an elephant kept
'happy' on a cocktail of drugs. But Roy Arnie has a dream that one day
he will run his own circus and he tells the boys that the key to his
dream is Jimmy. On the opening night a bungled attempt to give Jimmy
his ‘fix’ causes widespread panic. Jimmy escapes and so
begins a mad cap cross country road-trip to find Jimmy before he goes
cold turkey.
Suddenly
everyone wants a piece of Jimmy. A deranged bunch of animal activists
led by clean living, straight-edged couple Marius (Kyle MacLachlan)
and Bettina (Emilia Fox) are after Jimmy to front their cause. A trigger-happy
Scottish hunting party (James Cosmo, David Tennant, Douglas Henshall,
Russell Barr) think his head would look great mounted on their wall
and the Lappish Mafia - the meanest men in the North (The League of
Gentlemen - Reece Shearsmith, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton) want to
‘hit’ him for a big payoff. Jimmy's only chance is a benevolent
moose who befriends him on the road. Can he help to free Jimmy, release
him from his addiction and save him from a million dollar secret…?
We shall have to wait and see, so far the Norwegians have taken it to
number 2 in their domestic box office, just behind Ice Age 2. There
is no date yet confirmed for Simon Pegg’s English language version
of the film, it is likely to pick up a distributor whilst showing at
Cannes. Rest assured, we will be bothering the appropriate P.R. people
for Mr Pegg’s attention just as soon as we know more.
