Haakon Haakonsen (1990)

User Rating:

6.3/10   

Director:

Nils Gaup

Writers (WGA):

O.V. Falck-Ytter (book)
Nils Gaup (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

1 March 1991 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Family

Plot:

A young Norwegian boy in 1850's England goes to work as a cabin boy and discovers some of his shipmates are actually pirates.

Plot Keywords:

Ship | Boy | Weapon | Pirate | 1850s

Awards:

3 nominations

Cast

Stian Smestad	...	Haakon Haakonsen
Gabriel Byrne	...	Lt. John Merrick
Louisa Millwood-Haigh	...	Mary (as Louisa Haigh)
Trond Peter Stamsø Munch	...	Jens
Bjørn Sundquist	...	Mr. Håkonsen
Eva von Hanno	...	Mrs. Håkonsen
Kjell Stormoen	...	The Captain
Karl Sundby	...	Bosun
Knut Walle	...	Berg
Harald Brenna	...	Steine
John Sigurd Kristensen	...	Bakken
Geo von Krogh	...	Old Salt
Frank Krog	...	Wernes
Joachim Rafaelsen	...	Ole
Guy Fithen	...	Thatcher

Also Known As:

Piratgrottans hemlighet (Sweden)
Shipwrecked (International: English title)

Runtime:

92 min

Country:

Norway | Sweden | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:L | Australia:G | Germany:12 | Norway:11 | Sweden:11 | USA:PG

Filming Locations:

Fiji

Company:

Filmkameratene A/S

Trivia:

A dramatization by Norwegian author O. V. Falck-Ytter's "Haakon Haakonsen. En norsk Robinson" (Haakon Haakonsen. A Norwegian Robinson), an action-adventure story aimed at youths, it was inspired by Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" and published in 1873.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Haakon drops a crate with explosives in it onto a bonfire, it blows up before it reaches the bonfire.

Quotes:

[as they leave a booby-trapped cave]
Jens: It's a miracle you ever got out of there alive.
Håkon: I nearly didn't.

Clean sailors and polite pirates.

This film is a good example of how bowdlerizing a story to make it presentable to someone's fallacious misconception of "children" can render it useless to anyone of any age. For goodness sake, children are the most rough and raucous people around -- and if not that then at least as rough and raucous as any other cohort. That's probably in large part why they LIKE stories about sailors and pirates in the first place. A sailing ship is one place where no one washes, or changes his clothes, or needs to "watch his language." In this film no one ever even gets dirty, and even the pirates are POLITE! Of course the idea that, on an uninhabited island, one would pretty soon dispense with clothing altogether - well Heavens, we would't want children to even THINK about that. I would hope that anyone over the age of ten would have the good sense to be sickened by this one, even if they didn't know that patronizing them was the reason it's so bad.