After “Mission: Mouse Hunt – Chaos Under the Christmas Tree” I was almost certain that director Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken must have been born around 1980. After all, his turbulent holiday fairy tale was inspired by two films for which he would have been exactly the right age when they were released in cinemas in 1990 and 1996 respectively. In fact, the Norwegian filmmaker (“Munch”) was only born in 1989 – but by then he will definitely have watched the models endlessly on VHS video cassettes: “Home Alone” and “Mission: Impossible” (whose iconic abseiling scene is already based on the German poster).
While the original Norwegian title literally translates as “If no one falls into the trap”, the German title with its Tom Cruise reminiscence makes perfect sense – especially since the film also opens with a promising text panel, according to which all the stunts were carried out by professional people and mice and you should therefore definitely not imitate them yourself at home. And actually: When the human dad and the mouse dad start fighting, then things really start to fly. Luckily, at least the children keep a cool head.
Even as a mouse, Lea can cheat very well when saying “HUMAN, don’t get angry”…
Mouse girl Lea (voice in the German version: Lina Larissa Strahl) and her family were really lucky: They live in a large house in the country that has been empty for a long time – and in the middle of it all, they have made themselves really comfortable in a dollhouse that has already been decorated for Christmas. Lea only knows people from her father Rasmus's stories – and they are pretty scary when he talks about deadly poisons and traps.
But then the festive, contemplative peace is suddenly disturbed: the human boy's dad Mikkel (Vegard Strand Eide from “A Christmas for Teddy”) has inherited the house – and now wants to celebrate Christmas there with his family too. But while Lea and Mikkel quickly become friends, the mouse parents and human parents (Sara Khorami, Pål Sverre Valheim Hagen) simply don't want to listen to them – and instead get entangled in a quickly escalating small war…
Nice nasty pranks
When European productions – with comparatively modest budgets – venture into CGI-heavy effects films, the results are still quite mixed. But the gap to Hollywood's over-competition is still getting smaller and smaller – and “Mission: Mouse Hunt” is an example where it's really hardly noticeable anymore: Would the mouse family have a few more moving hairs in a $100 million US spectacle? Probably yes! But who cares as long as “Mission: Mouse Hunt” delivers where it really counts?
When Lea handles the miniature teacups from the dollhouse when she first meets Mikkel, it looks super cute! And later, once the small war between humans and animals has broken out, the mutual attacks are not only visually spectacular, but – in the best “Home Alone” tradition – sometimes also pretty nasty: In addition to super glue when washing your hair and chili powder in your coffee, there is also a toaster that has been converted into a candy mortar, after using which Mikkel's dad's face is drawn in a similar way to Mikkel's back then Burglar Merv (Daniel Stern) after receiving a hot iron in the face from Kevin (Macaulay Culkin).
After this “Mission: Impossible” memory shot, the question of why the film is called “Mission: Mouse Hunt” in Germany is probably solved…
“Mission: Mouse Hunt” is loosely inspired by the Christmas carol classic “The Mouse Song” by Alf Prøysen, which literally every child in Norway knows and which is played on the radio every year during Advent: “When the nights get long and the cold sets in, the little mouse mom says to her group of children: 'If no one falls into the trap, but be careful, We'll all be celebrating Christmas again soon!'” But even three quarters of a century after the poetic original was published, the moral of the film now seems very relevant: Many conflicts could be avoided simply by simply listening to the children for a change…
Conclusion: You definitely can't go wrong this Advent by choosing “Mission: Mouse Hunt” as your screen Christmas fairy tale.