"Das unglaubliche Fussballspiel der Tiere", which literally translated means "The incredible soccer/football game of the animals", is a German animated short film from 1998, so this one is over 25 years old now, and internationally it is mostly known as "Animal Soccer World", which summarizes the action pretty nicely too and without superlatives, even if only one third of this half hour is really the game then. The writer and director here was the late Roswitha Haas and she made this film pretty much in the middle of her very prolific 12-15 years that include (short) films about many famous characters and tales, so this one is a bit of an exception as nobody really knows these characters included in here. The production company she usually worked for is called Dingo Pictures and if you take a look at all they did (with Haas), you will realize that most of these works scored really bad ratings and reviews. It must be said, however, that this film here for example was only rated by 69 people as of now, so it is not a totally representative rating. And as you can see from my rating, I would say that this was not as bad as people say it is. I read that the international dub in the English language was pretty woeful, so maybe this is one reason. The Germann dub I did not mind. On the contrary, I would say that the voice acting was maybe the film's strongest side. It was exactly what children would expect and like with how almost all actors went over the top to adjust their voices to the respective animal they were portraying. The film starts with a violent conflict between a panther and a dog and they argue also about who is the better football player and the consequence then is a football game between the jungle animals and the dogs/canines.
As I stated earlier, 20 of the overall 30 minutes are pretty much preparation for all this. We have the conflict of a young dog who wants to play, but is not allowed to by the other folks because he is too small. Luckily, the dog they really want as goalkeeper sides with the young hound and so he does not only get to play, but even scores the equalizer close before the end. A bit expected and maybe unrealistically over the top, but I am still in favor because they did not shove it into our faces constantly afterwards. On the contrary, the game is over then immediately afterwards and there is talk about a follow-up game. Aside from the football action, this film also brings in quite a lot for only half an hour. There's cheerleaders, there is the decision who will bring the referee and who will bring the linesman, there's food sold during halftime break, there's hooligeese (my favorite play on words here perhaps, especially the German word for those, which is even closer to "hooligans"), there's clearly biased commentators and so on. Basically everything that belongs to a football game was included here in a somewhat funny and entertaining manner. I am indeed pretty shocked this film received such a poor reception. It is far from awful. You can probably say that the cartoon style there looks as if it could also be 20 years older than it actually is, so not a treat physically, but I like the retro approach in general and I thought it fit well with the story, so all is well. There were also a few moments that made me laugh. Not only hooligeese, but also for example the moment when there is a penalty kick and the canine goalkeeper refuses to try to stop the ball because he is scared of being hit and stands just on the side with an offended face expression. I liked that character in general, even if I wonder why they really wanted him so much as the goalkeeper after all we find out about him and how it also costs them the compromise to allow the boy into the team.
Anyway, there was also a friendship story in here between said young dog and a young lion and the latter definitely reminded me of Simba. The looks did, the voice not at all. His father resembled Mufasa, only that he surely reached a much older age than Mufasa from what we are told about the adult lion here. He does not look that old though. The friendship story between the two young ones was also depicted nicely. There is talk at the very end that now they can be friends again and hang out for six weeks before the next football game then. So it fits in nicely with the premise that you have to ignore friendship for 90 minutes during the action if there's people in the other team that you are close with, but afterwards all can be back to harmony and hanging out together again. Admittedly, they also played around in a not super competitive fashion during the game on one occasion which resulted in one commentator calling it a friendly game or actually saying that it should be such and he was in disbelief in terms of what he was seeing there. The commentators were generally entertaining, so it was both interesting what we saw and what we heard. I guess this is pretty much it then. Surely, this is a film that is not super great, also visually there could have been more face expressions for example to the characters, but it is entertaining at times, has some charm here and there and on one or two occasions I even saw some guilty pleasure potential plus I liked most of the characters, also the supporting characters like the nervous reporter early on or the female paramedic. All this results in me giving the outcome here 2 stars out of 5 and a positive recommendation overall. It is especially for kids, but not exclusively. Also for those that are still young at heart. Ignore the ones bullying this little film. Besides, at 30 minutes only you are not really wasting too much time. Also ignore the imdb poster for this title as those characters or nationalities (Germany, Brazil) are not included in this movie.
As I stated earlier, 20 of the overall 30 minutes are pretty much preparation for all this. We have the conflict of a young dog who wants to play, but is not allowed to by the other folks because he is too small. Luckily, the dog they really want as goalkeeper sides with the young hound and so he does not only get to play, but even scores the equalizer close before the end. A bit expected and maybe unrealistically over the top, but I am still in favor because they did not shove it into our faces constantly afterwards. On the contrary, the game is over then immediately afterwards and there is talk about a follow-up game. Aside from the football action, this film also brings in quite a lot for only half an hour. There's cheerleaders, there is the decision who will bring the referee and who will bring the linesman, there's food sold during halftime break, there's hooligeese (my favorite play on words here perhaps, especially the German word for those, which is even closer to "hooligans"), there's clearly biased commentators and so on. Basically everything that belongs to a football game was included here in a somewhat funny and entertaining manner. I am indeed pretty shocked this film received such a poor reception. It is far from awful. You can probably say that the cartoon style there looks as if it could also be 20 years older than it actually is, so not a treat physically, but I like the retro approach in general and I thought it fit well with the story, so all is well. There were also a few moments that made me laugh. Not only hooligeese, but also for example the moment when there is a penalty kick and the canine goalkeeper refuses to try to stop the ball because he is scared of being hit and stands just on the side with an offended face expression. I liked that character in general, even if I wonder why they really wanted him so much as the goalkeeper after all we find out about him and how it also costs them the compromise to allow the boy into the team.
Anyway, there was also a friendship story in here between said young dog and a young lion and the latter definitely reminded me of Simba. The looks did, the voice not at all. His father resembled Mufasa, only that he surely reached a much older age than Mufasa from what we are told about the adult lion here. He does not look that old though. The friendship story between the two young ones was also depicted nicely. There is talk at the very end that now they can be friends again and hang out for six weeks before the next football game then. So it fits in nicely with the premise that you have to ignore friendship for 90 minutes during the action if there's people in the other team that you are close with, but afterwards all can be back to harmony and hanging out together again. Admittedly, they also played around in a not super competitive fashion during the game on one occasion which resulted in one commentator calling it a friendly game or actually saying that it should be such and he was in disbelief in terms of what he was seeing there. The commentators were generally entertaining, so it was both interesting what we saw and what we heard. I guess this is pretty much it then. Surely, this is a film that is not super great, also visually there could have been more face expressions for example to the characters, but it is entertaining at times, has some charm here and there and on one or two occasions I even saw some guilty pleasure potential plus I liked most of the characters, also the supporting characters like the nervous reporter early on or the female paramedic. All this results in me giving the outcome here 2 stars out of 5 and a positive recommendation overall. It is especially for kids, but not exclusively. Also for those that are still young at heart. Ignore the ones bullying this little film. Besides, at 30 minutes only you are not really wasting too much time. Also ignore the imdb poster for this title as those characters or nationalities (Germany, Brazil) are not included in this movie.