Pippi on the Run certainly is the best of the series. It somehow manages to move even beyond the irreverent mischievous fun of the other films, and becomes a transcendent opus to the freedom and creativity of being a child. In essence, Pippi is doing we would all like to do, both as children and even more so as adults. She taunts authority, flouts convention, and lives life to the fullest by her own rules, as she takes her two best friends Tommy and Anika on a wild adventure through the Swedish countryside. Some of the scenes in the film are almost like Bergman for kids. In one particularly beautiful segment, Pippi and her friends take shelter in an old shack during a rain storm, where they encounter a forlorn old man with a long beard playing the saw. He turns out to be a salesman of a particularly potent type of super glue, with which he accidentally affixes his beard to the windowsill. As Pippi goes cavorting all over the ceiling, much to the delight of her companions, the old man is forced to part with his signature beard to release himself from the windowsill. Ingeniously the scene is somehow imbued with both sadness, loneliness, and wild humor. I haven't seen this movie in about 15 years, but that scene is still vivid in my mind as the day I first saw it. If that isn't a testament to it's influence I don't know what is. Pippi truly is the greatest and most inspiring heroine/hero for children. Every child should see this celebration of imagination and freedom.
Review of Pippi on the Run
