I watched this movie a few years ago, but I still remember how I wanted to constantly gouge my eyes out. The animation looks like it was done on a potato, the dialog makes absolutely no sense and was obviously sent through google translate, and wasn't checked to make sure it made sense. The plot is what a two year old on crack would write on a bad day. And this is no where near a so bad it's good movie, this movie is an abomination from hell. If you value your mental sanity do yourself a favor and don't see this movie

The 1.4/5 Star rating on Netflix should have been a dead give-away that this movie would not be that good. The animation was good, the story line was extremely cheesy but was bearable, the music was really good, but there were just a few weird things that made me want to turn it off multiple times.The dad was a failure and was trying to live through his son, and held his son to unfeasible standards, causing his son to feel like a perpetual failure. A great message for the target audience, and a very real issue. Those unrealistic standards that the dad had for his kid i this movie was to be like Tarzan: to climb trees, ride a bike, be strong, and read books. The kid wanted to ditch school to go dumpster diving to collect trash to build uber creepy "garbage friends" that he stored in an abandoned warehouse. Usually these types of movies encourage kids to "be themselves", and encouraging parents to accept their kids for who they are. But, the dad's "encouragement" was uncomfortably extreme for a children's movie, and was downright abusive at times. In risk of sounding like an authoritarian, no parent should encourage their kid to be like Ivan. -I have no idea why the animators decided to give all the women really weird boobs.-I have no idea why girls in Ivan's grade were old enough to have boobs, drive vehicles, look like teenagers, yet be barely learning how to read. It's like they were all 15 year-old learning how to read for the first time.-I don't know why Ivan had to chase letters around the room to represent his dyslexia. That scene didn't make much sense to me. -His creations were EXTREMELY creepy. It was even weirder that the girl like them.-I know that the witch was representative of his fairy god mother. Yet, she was really creepy. He found her drinking in the middle of the woods, got naked, and slept in her clothes. Then he drank weird potions she gave him. I think it was supposed to be funny, but it was weird.-The kid's life was a living hell. Why would she give him a potion that would make his pain go away for only a day? To send him back to the pit of despair?-The years of abuse the dad gave to the kid ended with a simple talk?-At the end, he never really overcame being bullied, or learned how to read.There were other things off about this movie, but these were some of the highlights.

Don't recommend this for children. The movie started out promising, with great graphics and a cute kid. However, you met the father who treats his son very poorly.Throughout the movie you come across bullies and many others who abuse him.Like the others said, the moral is it is better to be the victim of bullying rather than being the bully itself. I wouldn't want to show kids that this is okay. Didn't like the message from this movie, and definitely did not like the way things ended. They don't hold back on anything, showing cruel forms of abuse and revenge. I also noticed his dyslexia in the movie. It was horrible how the kids and even the principal himself, treated Ivan. Even though this movie may show many true and realistic events, it's not the type of movie for kids.

This movie is a kids movie but does not have a good moral. It is a Danish language movie (English dub) and I am writing this from an American perspective, so I'll defer to Europeans for their take on it. But for Americans the moral will not be well thought of. The movie is about bullying and spends almost the entire time (about 80%) showing cruel images of a young boy, Ivan, being abused, which makes for a very uncomfortable 90 minutes. After a long process and very little respite, the movie ends on an abusive note. The moral of the story is that it is better to be abused by a bully than to be a bully. That will not sit well for many people. Also, the implication in the movie was that the adults (school authorities and shopkeepers) were all participants in the cruelty. As for the technical details of the animation, the movie is quite well done, and had the story been even a little bit different, (intervention by school authorities, for example) I would have enjoyed it. As it is, it seems to promote the hopelessness of the victim, and that is a view I'd rather not instill in children.