Today I’m covering the great works from Dingo Pictures. I intend to split the review into roughly the same categories as they are put on the official website and today we start with the first section. Its name is “Krimis” in German which I think is more appropriately translated into “thriller” than “mystery story” or “detective story”.
The Case for Mouse Police (aka simply Mouse Police)
Self-describing title cardThe story is rather simple: Max and Sophie Emmental help the detective and police to investigate the theft of cheese.
Max and Sophie. Mickey and Minnie, eat your heart out!
Since it’s a detective story, I should not disclose plot much. But I assure you, it has some twists and thrills.
Have fun unseeing this.But in the end the band is caught!
Band photo part 1…
… and part 2So justice is served and cheese is recovered.
The heroes reading about themselves in a newspaper
BTW beside the advertisement for French cheese-resembling product, the curious thing is the newspaper name. It’s Lauterbacher Käseblatt or Cheesepaper of Lauterbach and I’m pretty sure this is a shout out to Lauterbach in Hessen, not that far from where Dingo Pictures headquarters are located.
Lucy and Lionel (aka Nice Cats)
This is a simple story: there was a lady with a cat and two kittens (Lucy and Lionel). The mother cat is a refined cat lady, Lionel is a calm kitten who likes to read and Lucy is a playful kitten who does not regard the rules much.
Lucy and Lionel. The book title is “Animals in laboratory” by Dr. Jekyl, not sure about the genre though.So once they went to vacation and Lucy was kidnapped there. With the help of another cat named Charlie, Lucy managed to escape but it was too late: her family had left back home already! So two friends travel back to San Francisco.
Lucy and Charlie on the way home.
And the story ends well.
The happy ending.Curious fact worth mentioning:
Luca B. had a cameo here.
Janis, the Little Piggy (aka Jamie, aka Babe, aka Piglet)
This story is a social commentary in a form of story about young piglet that could not fit well into existing environment. Like right after being born she’s asked how many siblings she got and after her guessing several numbers she only gets a remark “what to expect from a pig, she can’t count at all”. And that’s instead of being impressed by newborn pig knowing numbers! I’ve seen human children four-five years older that count about equally good (even worse actually, since they can’t guess number like “seventy six”) and yet are not considered dumb.
Janis tries to learn various things from other farm animals, like French from local rooster or jumping like a goat. But mostly she’s told not to do such nonsense because pigs are supposed just to eat, get fat and be sold to other farms to have their own piglets there. Even if a runaway pig Mr. Müller tells otherwise, nobody believes him (IIRC there was a movie ripping off the same plot just a couple years ago).
Eventually Janis is sold but she ends up at a slaughterhouse and not a farm.
Slaughterhouse is not the best place to leave good impressions on piglets IMO
Luckily, she manages to escape and even visit the farm once again before moving to live in a forest as a wild pig with Mr. Müller, who has managed to get less domestic since they last met.
Herr Müller, something tells me he might’ve been from Bavaria
So, beside looking like a simple cartoon for young children, this cartoon has an unexpected deep thoughts too. And there were some other surreal moments not exactly for children to understand where an owl in a forest sounded exactly like an alarm or this duck producing her own siren sound (actually now I think about her when I here sirens of passing ambulances or police cars).
da-DI-dada da-DI-dadaIn the Search of Dalmatians
This action/thriller cartoon tells the story of dalmatians who went out to play once but were caught by two big mean twins Castor and Pollux (black dogs) who force puppies to work by gluing labels in their own company (yes, even dogs can own and run a company).
The happy dalmatians (about a hundred of them, I suppose)
Less happy dalmatiansThe other dogs tried to help parents to find any trace of the missing puppies until Butcher (he has English name in the original) finds something. So later the dogs manage to rescue the puppies and trap Castor and Pollux (I shan’t tell how—watch it!).
There are some artwork details worth mentioning.
First, this feature has many CG backgrounds instead of traditional hand-painted ones.
Here’s an example.And another one, if you look at the shots from the sequence below, you can spot one thing:
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4That’s right, Dingo Pictures were so artistic that their cartoon still pays homage to the classical theatre with actors waiting to enter the stage. Those touches are exactly the thing that makes their cartoons so remarkable.
…Even More Dalmatians (aka Dalmatians 3)
I think the best description for this cartoon would be calling it In the Search of Dalmatians reboot. You have about the same story (dalmatian puppies going to the city, being caught, forced to work for Castor and Pollux, and being rescued after that) but there are twists and significantly different details even is the cast is mostly the same.
First, puppies live with some old lady (never pictured here) instead of living with their parents.
Second, they go to the city not just for fun but to buy a present to her—gingerbread.
Third, they are misunderstood for thieves even if they wanted to barter and caught by the police and put into the animal shelter (where Castor and Pollux force them to work).
Fourth, now it’s a cat helping in searches.
I bet you did not expect cat to carry a laptop back in early 2000s.
Fifth, Castor and Pollux are disposed of completely differently.
But one thing does not change: the puppies get a happy ending!
There’s one more thing to note: look at the picture with narrator flying.
It makes me wonder whether it was painted after the actual place, probably somewhere near Taunus.
Okay, that’s enough for now. I hope to continue it in a few weeks (there’s still NihAV left to implement after all).