Definitive proof that LSD and Cirque du Soleil do not mix…
While other movie companies in the 80s were riding the Beefcake wave or chasing Oscars with cripped up monstrosities, a little production team in Canada was doing something very different…creating nightmare fuel aimed at children. The Great Land of Small might not be the worst representation of disability we’ve covered on this pod but it might be the strangest film we’ve covered so far. Joined by victim Adam Kearney, we try to figure out what the heck the Great Land of Small is and debate whether or not this even counts as a disability film.
Listen at…
Grading the Film
As always, this film is reviewed with scores recorded in four main categories, with 1 being the best and 5 being the worst. Like the game of golf, the lower the score the better.
How accurate is the representation?
Jeff – 2 / 5
Adam – 2 / 5
Total – 4 / 10
How difficult was it to watch the movie?
Adam – 3 / 5
Jeff – 4 / 5
Total – 7 / 10
How often were things unintentionally funny?
Jeff – 2 / 5
Adam – 3 / 5
Total – 5 / 10
How far back has it put disabled people?
Adam – 2 / 5
Jeff – 2 / 5
Total – 4 / 10
The Verdict
Regrets, I have a few…
Transcript – Part 1
Trailer narrator:
Beyond our world, there lies a secret land, a land of magic, mystery, friendship, and wonder. A land where it doesn’t matter how big you are, just how big you dream. The great land of small. Rated G.
Jeff:
You are listening to invalid culture, a podcast dedicated to excavating the strangest and most baffling media representations of disability. This podcast is all about staring into the abyss of pop culture adjacent films that never quite broke through because well, they’re just awful. So buckle up folks – the following content is rated I for invalid.
Mvll Crimes (theme song):
I’m arguing with strangers on the internet not going out today because I’m feeling too upset with strangers on and I’m winning.
Jeff:
Welcome back to another thrilling episode of Invalid Culture. As always, I am your host, Jeff Preston, and today I’m joined by old friend, graphic designer, exceptional human being. Adam Kearney, how are you doing?
Adam:
I’m okay. I don’t know about the exceptional human being part, but yeah, I’m doing good and thanks for having me on here.
Jeff:
Totally. So for our listeners, I assume all of them are stalkers of yours, but for the one or two that aren’t, who are you, Adam?
Adam:
Oh man. If I had stalkers that really spice up my life, I’m Adam Kearney, as you mentioned, a graphic designer and a general creative. I like to say I struggle with identifying as an artist, but a lot of my creative output would be considered art, I guess. I have a side hustle called Hand Cut Company. I make Spoony spoon rings a rings out of old spoons, and I make necklaces out of the parts that I cut off. And I’ve also babbled a little bit in writing. I’ve written three memoir essays, which I was fortunate enough to ask you to write two forwards for, which is also why I felt obligated to appear on this podcast. I felt like it was in the fine prints of the paperwork I signed. But yeah, also, if you’re interested in checking out some of the things, I’ve made a hand cut company on Instagram. There’s a website there too. You can access the essays that Jeff was nice enough to edit and write forwards for as pay what you can downloads on there as well. I’ve kind recently become a bit of a event organizer with a few friends. I’ve started Punk Rock Flea Market Chatham in hopes of creating a bit of a community for all the misfits in our area. And other than that I, I’ve got a dog life partner named Pogue. That means the world to me. And I think that’s all I got.
Jeff:
Yeah, I know. I think that’s pretty good. I got to say I got a couple of really nice hand cut stickers that I use. I got a really nice wheelchair fascist smashing sticker and a Oh yeah, yeah. Algorithms killing humanity sticker on my laptop.
Adam:
I get a lot of comments about that sticker you asked me to make this machine kills fascists.
Jeff:
Hell yeah.
Adam:
Anti fascist wheelchair logo on it. I love it. It’s on my laptop.
Jeff:
Now, there’s another connection actually that you and I have, which is that we are both disabled. No, not actually the real thing. Well, that is a thing, but the real thing is that I was
Adam:
Going to say, wait a minute, we aren’t.
Jeff:
Yeah, no, we’re not actually disabled. This has all just been a giant ploy to them. Sweet benefits. No, not actually. But the real thing is that both of us, like many young people with disabilities, people born with disabilities have experiences working our way through the disability camp system. And so I thought that might be a really interesting place for us. Just to start, just for a little aside, because both of us have experienced camp on both sides. Both sides as campers, but also as organizers within the camps. And so yeah, disability camps, is this a thing that we have not talked enough about as unintentional organizing spaces for disabled people?
Adam:
Well, organizing, but also really, I’ve reflected a lot on it lately, especially after watching Crip camp in just the community there outside of social justice and connection there, just the sense of being in community of other individuals with a shared life experience. It really adds a certain context to how we navigate life, those frustrations and obstacles. So many of us face is just common knowledge between us. And so when you don’t have to spend a lot of your time explaining what frustrates you to strangers, you’re able to really dive deeper into conversation and connection. And so it really kind of makes me sad and it’s partly why I started distancing myself from the organization that shall not be named when they start transitioning away from offering camp programs and closing some of the camps that you and I both attended. I feel like there’s been at least a couple generations now that have kind of lost out on that opportunity.
Jeff:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I got to tell you, I’ll never forget the first time I went to camp and I remember being in my dorm and there’s a bunch of dudes with disabilities, various sort of physical disabilities, and we’re doing one of, you get in a circle and you introduce yourself, and I was the last person to introduce myself. And as everybody does in your mind, you’re preparing what you’re going to say. And I was used to introducing myself. And the way that I always had to introduce myself was, I’m Jeff. I have a muscular dystrophy, had it since birth. I have done charity work. I was a poster child. I have had these surgeries. These are the things I cannot do. But this is the typical way that you’re kind of expected to disclose and to present yourself in a world because that’s what people want to know about you typically.
And I remember being in this circle, and as we’re going around, it was like, oh yeah, I know. Literally everybody around this room have done charity work. Literally everyone around this room has a celebrity friend. Everyone around this room has an award named after them. Everyone in this room has the experiences that I’ve had. And so when it got to me, I was like, well, shoot, how am I going to differentiate myself? And so it was like, yeah, my name is Jeff. I like Star Wars fishing and hockey, and that’s who I am. And it was weirdly liberating and also deeply depressing in that moment of realization that I never got to necessarily be Jeff who likes hockey, fishing and Star Wars. It was always, I’m Jeff, I’m disabled, and then those things exist too, but that’s not what people want to know. And so I found that really fascinating in camp that there was this opportunity to be, I don’t want to say your authentic self, but to be more than just your impairment label.
Adam:
Yeah, I completely agree with that. And I feel like that’s what I was touching on, that when you’re not kind of always introducing yourself by that identifier, you’re allowed to show up in a different way when you’re not putting your energy into that. And I found it afforded me a lot of opportunities that I wouldn’t have gotten had I not been part of that community. Certainly I had a different relationship with it because when I got to be a teenager, I applied to be a leader in training and make the transition from camper to counselor. And I found in hindsight now that that transition actually provided me space to disassociate from my disability to move up the hierarchy of disability in a way that turned out to be really unhealthy because in hindsight, I was no longer really in community with individuals with disability. I was no longer a peer. And I feel like I really struggled with that for a long time without realizing it, and it really makes me look back much more fondly on those days now, and I really wish I’d continued on a different path in a certain way, but hindsight’s always 2020
Jeff:
Yeah, as they say. Yeah, and I think that’s the other side of me with the camp story that I think is important for us to think about is that a lot of disability camps, yeah, there could be these incredible spaces of productive radicalization of disabled kids, of which I think is a good thing. I don’t mean that as a bad thing, but I think the bad thing is that a lot of these spaces though, are created by charities and charities that are often beholden to medical understandings of disability. So you are building this space, but it’s a space that tends to be structured by these hierarchies of ability, structured by the idea of the care provider versus the care receiver. You get these sort of thin, increasingly strong lines built between those who organize the camp, the providers of care, and those who are attending the camp and those who are the receivers of care. That’s, I think, something that we need to really engage with and think about. What would a camp, a disability justice camp perhaps look like that gets away from some of those medical imperatives that structure many of the camp experiences that people go into right now.
Adam:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s really interesting because it was something I noticed in Crip Camp in that they really kind of featured how integrated the caregivers were in their daily life. They were hanging around and chumming around, whereas, I don’t know about your camp because we went to different camps. There was that kind of separation, although I still managed to connect with a handful of counselors in a very personal and engaging way. I remember one counselor, Chris Berry, introduced me to all sorts of punk music and zine culture and all this stuff that being a teenager growing up in a small town, Chatham, Ontario, I wouldn’t have been exposed to. And so it was by going to camp, I got exposed to how other people live, other culture, other things. But yeah, it really is interesting to see that hierarchy or I don’t know the right word to describe that separation.
Jeff:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I will say my first camp experience was a counselor informing me. She was a woman and informing me that her father had met her mother at that camp. One of them, I think the father was the counselor, and her mother was a camper, and they later got married and had her, and I was like, well, that’s a weird introduction, and now I don’t know how to feel about our relationship that we’re forming right now. Yikes. So yeah, I avoided that counselor for the remainder of my time. Yeah, I was just a little weirded out by that.
Adam:
You’re saying that’s not how you met your wife?
Jeff:
No, my wife and I did not meet…well, we did actually meet at a camp. A different kind of camp, which is called University. It’s a very expensive camp. Yeah. Now I want to pick up on this sort of point you made is this thing about learning how other people live because I think that is a great segue to the wonderful piece of torture that you’ve provided for me this month for Invalid Culture, which is of course, the 1980s Canadian made for TV movie, the Great Land of Small.
Adam:
I would apologize if I actually felt bad about this. I feel like you’ve subjected me to a lot of movies that I feel were kind of questionable. But
Jeff:
Yeah, I was just going to say, why this movie? Why did we watch this movie, Adam?
Adam:
So I actually don’t know the full origin story of it, but at some point, my mother discovered that there was an actor with the same disability as me, osteogenesis Imperfecta, and he starred in this movie called The Great Land of the Small and subjected us to watching it multiple times, and it really doesn’t make a lot of sense this movie, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense to a young child. I think it’s been well over 20 years since I’ve watched this movie, but when you were kind of discussing about possible movies that we could watch and discuss on this podcast, I threw this one out, and so that’s how we landed in the predicament we are currently in
Jeff:
And quite the predicament we are in. So for this month, we watched The Great Land of Small, which is a very difficult film to get your hands on. You can rent it or buy it on several, no one streaming platform, at least in Canada. Apple TV is the only place that you can physically access it for money or you can watch a, I want to say a five to 10 pixel version of the film on YouTube. If you look it up, some generous soul has broken copyright law and placed it on the internet, although I don’t know that they broke the law because there is only about half of the pixels from the movie included in the video online.
Adam:
It’s definitely a rip from a VHS too. It has the square frame formatting and the little bit of bad tracking along the top of it. At a few moments,
Jeff:
It looks like a VHS that has been sitting beside a magnet and then ripped onto a computer and then encoded to be the worst possible video possible
Adam:
Accurate.
Jeff:
So for those of you who haven’t seen this, which I again assume is probably only one or two of you listening, what is the great land of Small? Well, we found a summary on a website called Kittle. Kittle is allegedly a dictionary or an encyclopedia for children, and this is how they describe the great land of small two children. Jenny and David meet a leprechaun like creature called Fritz in the woods. However, his gold dust is being stolen by a wicked hunter, only mimic the Indian knows the creatures is in our world. As the hunter becomes mad with power, he attempts to capture Fritz and the children with mimics help they escaped to the land of small, a mystical, magical land. Does that describe the movie that we watched
Adam:
In some ways? Yes.
Jeff:
Sort of
Adam:
Loosely. I’ve certainly read worst descriptions of movies. I think the really odd thing about the description and the movie is no one actually refers to the character as a leprechaun. No. And there is no real allusion to him being a leprechaun other than he appears at the bottom of a rainbow and he doesn’t have a pot of gold. Instead, he has a satchel of what appears to be gold dust,
Jeff:
Magical gold dust
Adam:
Magical gold dust, and a nugget, I believe, a single nugget of gold.
Jeff:
Yes, I will say that in investigating this film, Fritz is described as a leprechaun. Fritz is described as a magical figure, magical. There’s a lot of weird ways of describing Fritz, but there is no clarity on what Fritz is.
Adam:
I would agree.
Jeff:
Now, obviously the politically incorrect phrase here describing Mimic as quote “the Indian,” which I believe they mean indigenous. I wanted to follow that up with you, though I did not know or read Mimic as being an indigenous person.
Adam:
No, and actually I didn’t realize he was supposed to be indigenous in character. However, I feel in hindsight, our opinion here might differ. I think you feel as though Mimic is a character who displays disability, certain qualities, but I feel those qualities might be racial stereotypes.
Jeff:
Interesting. Okay. Well, let’s put a pin in that and come back to it because I want to get into that. Okay, so what is this film? So the film is produced as part of a long running television movie series dubbed Tales for All created by the Quebec firm, Les Productions, Lafe, which were generally adaptations of children’s books or they were movies that were then turned into children’s books. It was one of those kind of multimedia type situations. Now, this is the fifth film of the series, which was released in 1986. The most recent film released in the series number 25 was released in 2023 a year ago.
Adam:
I’m still blown away by that. This franchise will not quit.
Jeff:
No, this is like The Avengers: Quebec. The Tales for All Collection has also allegedly won more than 200 international awards. I have no sourcing on what those awards are. That is just what they’ve claimed. Now, this film itself is not as you would imagine, necessarily a English only production. This was produced both for an English market as well as a French market, and in Quebec and anywhere else where French is spoken, the film has a different name. So in English, the title of the film is The Great Land of Small. However, in French, the film translates to the title. It’s not because we’re small that we can’t be big, which I guess is a way too long title for an English film. It’s also way too long for a French film, I would say, but I feel that title is maybe more accurate than the Great Land of Small to what this movie is about.
Adam:
I really agree with you there, especially we’ll get to it later. When you get to the Great Land of the Small, there is a real lack of small
Jeff:
No, exactly.
Adam:
The first people you see when you get there are not small. No,
Jeff:
It is very unclear why this land is called the Great Land of Small. There is nothing small really about this beyond our main character, Fritz and his twin brother, and there are some various little people mixed into the crowd, but also mostly children. Now, if you told me that this movie was about the power of children, that actually makes a lot more sense to me. The other thing that I think is important to note, I reached out to some of my Quebecois friends experts, and my understanding is that this phrase, it’s not because we’re small, that we can’t be big, is actually a bit of a colloquialism in Quebec. It was at the time, back in the eighties, and it’s tied to a deeper culture of the, and French speaking Canadians living within a country as an official language, but not necessarily feeling as though they’re on equal footing with the English speakers.
And so as I’ve been told that this actual narrative of the David versus Goliath, the small but powerful person overcoming the large sort of menacing adult, for instance, like children overcoming adults, this is a central narrative at this time in Quebec culture. And so that actually helps me also understand this film a little bit more. I have no idea if that’s what they were going for, but this is actually not an uncommon thing. When speaking to my friends in Quebec, they actually knew a lot about this and had never seen this film. They didn’t really know. They knew it existed, but they’d never seen it.
Adam:
Very interesting. So it’s a fair assessment to assume that this movie is a metaphor for how Quebec feels within the country known as Canada.
Jeff:
I think that’s a very plausible read on this film.
Adam:
Wow, I did not get that at all.
Jeff:
No, no. And again, I think there’s some layers here. I think on the first layer, there’s a child empowerment story that they’re trying to tell, which fits within the broader tales for all narrative. I think that makes sense. So where did this even come from? Well, this production company is Productions LA is the brainchild of Quebec Wall filmmaker, producer, and Order of Canada winner Rock The Bears, the first film in the series, the dog who stopped the war was inspired by an article about youth suicide. So that’s kind of where rock is coming from. In this whole project, he has gone on to explain that there are not enough individuals concerned with developing the imagination of young people in the right way and goes on to say, I want to help children leave childhood and go into adulthood with certain values. This is the age when they will build the values they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
Adam:
As a child who witnessed this movie, I can certainly say there’s probably only one element of this movie that I carried on through the entirety of my life, and that’s slime.
Jeff:
Right? I thought you were going to say you did Cob, but that’s okay,
Adam:
Jeff. I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about that on the podcast.
Jeff:
Yeah, sure. Right. Okay. Well, we’re going to talk more about Cobb later. So who made this film, r de Mars, obviously attached as a producer, but no real indication that he played a major role in the production of this? This was directed by a Czech director by the name of EK Ja. Long career in film and television, starting first in Czechia in the mid 1950s. Eventually after Survival World War ii and Ja, his father was killed in World War II. He died at Auschwitz. He did escape or survive rather, world War ii. He would eventually go on to study and eventually teach film, both in broader in Europe, moved sort of west and then eventually into the United States, and somehow ended up attached to this film, which I do not know. That story, as far as I could tell, has been lost to history. The film was written by a man named David Sigmund. This is his second film that he has written a script for and also his last script. So take that for what you will. I don’t know that this movie necessarily killed his career, but it is possible that she was like, I’m putting the pen down. I’ve written my opus. There’s nothing left to say for David Sigmund.
Adam:
He left it all on the page. You may say, yep,
Jeff:
Yep. You can’t improve on perfection. That’s the reality tip of our hat to David Sigmund. Most of us though probably have come to this film because of the star of the film, arguably the star of the film, which is of course the famous Michael J. Anderson, who plays Fritz as well as the twin brother of Fritz, the king of the land of small. Now, as mentioned earlier, Michael has the edge genetic disease called osteogenesis. Perfecta used a wheelchair growing up. An interesting yet strange fact about Michael J. Anderson, which I actually learned from Adam, is that he has developed the ability to talk backwards. He is able to talk naturally backwards, so if you play a tape backwards, you’d be able to understand it in forward or in English. He learned this skill while attending a school for disabled children. This is how he passed the time.
Adam:
Yeah, and actually the interesting tidbit there is David Lynch found this out when Michael J. Anderson, who I don’t know who stole the idea of using the initial first Michael J. Fox or Michael J. Anderson. This might be a case of the chicken or the egg, but when David Lynch hired Michael to play the man from another place on Twin Peaks, he discovered that he could speak backwards and actually had Michael teach his scene mates on Twin Peaks how to do it at a last minute thing, and so in the episodes where Michael appears and they’re talking backwards in the Black Lodge, it’s all Michael’s doing. Also, the interesting tidbit is the extra tidbit to the tidbit is Michael Anderson may be one of the few instances of somebody gripping down in a movie. David Lynch, also quite happy to have Michael back for Mulholland Drive, actually built a large prosthetic for Michael to sit in to appear as though he was a tall gentleman, and I believe Michael is somewhat, I think he’s under five foot. I actually don’t know. Yeah, I’d
Jeff:
Imagine.
Adam:
But yeah, he appeared as like a six foot a human being in Mulholland Drive, so I definitely suggest you listeners Googling Michael J. Anderson, Mulholland Drive, because you’ll be quite fascinated. Yeah,
Jeff:
Yeah. He’s an absolute trendsetter.
Adam:
Oh, totally. Speaking of trends setting, I jokingly suggest to my friends about starting a GoFundMe or Kickstarter to get a red suit made to fit me like the one Michael wears on Twin Peaks. It’s red, top to bottom, and he is styling.
Jeff:
Well, that’s a good promo. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, donate to Adam Kearney’s Red Suit campaign.
Adam:
So funny. We
Jeff:
Fully endorse this, fully endorse This will be the second GoFundMe that we have started this season. Oh, wow. First GoFundMe, you’ll have to listen to a previous episode to hear about that. It is a sequel to Tiptoes. Yeah.
Adam:
Oh, right. Yeah.
Jeff:
Mike Hoja Anderson is not the only star. Well, okay. No, Michael J. Anderson is the only star. However, there are other actors in this that have histories, one of which is Ken Roberts. Now, Ken Roberts plays what Kiddle described as the Evil Hunter. I am going to be describing him instead as his proper title, which is the owner of a bar who was named Flanagan. He also though plays the man dog Hybrid Munch. Now, Ken Roberts has appeared in a variety of movies, including an uncredited role where he was also a bartender in Brokeback Mountain. He also played the character Terrance in a star-studded film that no one has ever seen called, never Was. Have you ever seen? Never Was Adam.
Adam:
No. It’s my first time hearing about this.
Jeff:
Seriously, go to the IMDB page of Never Was. I’m not convinced this is a real movie.
Adam:
I’m sure we could track it down.
Jeff:
I’m guessing It is horrible if no one has heard of it, given the stars in This is unbelievable. Now, the two children, the brother and the sister, the brother is played by, sorry. David is the brother played by Michael Bule, I’m assuming is how he would pronounce his name. Not sure. Michael did not become a baseball star. As David wishes instead, he actually became a successful stunt artist and has appeared in shows that you maybe have seen such as Gotham, the Punisher, and one of my favorite shows. Happy Jenny. The sister is played by Clarine Elkin, who has not done really anything else mimic. The River Living Man is played by Cirque du Soleil clown Chocolat Trombley. You love whenever a person has chocolate as their middle name.
Adam:
Love it. I know, and the fact that he, it is all throughout the titling too. He demanded that his pseudonym be part of his titles. It’s fantastic. I love the dedication of Chocolat.
Jeff:
Absolutely. We will only be referring to him as Mimic or Chocolat for the rest of this episode. The rest of the cast is a random sprinkle of Quebec television regulars. Many of the folks reappear in future productions of the Tales for All series. I believe several of the cast members went on to direct future versions of this series. It is the strangest thing that I had no idea existed and continues to exist as of last year.
Adam:
I’m proud of them. Keep going guys.
Jeff:
It really does show you that without getting too deeply into Canadian politics, the two solitudes kind of thing, that there is this entire media empire that has been happening in Quebec since the eighties, and we had very little knowledge of it existing.
Adam:
Now I’m going to throw this curve ball out here. Do you think that Cirque du Soleil has anything to do with throwing money into this thing considering the amount of gymnasts that appear in this movie and I imagine continue to appear throughout the series?
Jeff:
Probably there is a weird focus on aerobatics gymnastics clowning in this movie. I really go back and forth on it. I think that there are two possible explanations. Explanation number one, Cirque du Soleil saw this as an opportunity to legitimize their work in sort of children’s cinema and thought it would be
Adam:
Kind of like what the WWF does with horror movies.
Jeff:
Exactly, yes, and thought it as like a promo opportunity. Right. They were diversifying their portfolio, and so they were glad to perform and to support this. The other possibility is they got paid for this, and this was just a moneymaking venture for random people in Cirque de Soleil. I would love to know which path they went down on this one.
Adam:
Oh man. That’s a whole other wormhole rabbit hole.
Jeff:
The other actors that were not included on this list was the very surprising number of animals. The animal budget in this film had to have been staggering.
Adam:
Oh, it’s phenomenal, and it almost seems trivial at parts too when Michael Anderson rolls over and cuddles a tamed raccoon only to say, what are you doing in my bed and end scene,
Jeff:
And the raccoon is attacking him.
Adam:
Yeah. I would love to hear a story about that.
Jeff:
Yeah. I believe that’s how Michael Anderson got rabies.
Adam:
He had to take some time out off after this feature film.
Jeff:
Now, we of course have our own opinions about this film, but we are not the only ones. There are lots of people that have actually written about this film, some of which more legitimate than others. I want to draw our attention, however, to a 1988 review that was published in Cinema Canada by a Marika Seno. So Seno says, “Jasny and Brault capture the forest at dusk. This quality of light–rarely seen in films–makes Flanigan and his men appear as undefinable shapes lost in the darkening forest. The blue tinge together with the mystical synthesizer music adds to the be witching feel that the Jasny-Brault duo creates.”
Adam:
I would like to comment in that they must have definitely watched the HD transfer on Apple TV because the rip that is on YouTube, and I imagine the VHS version that I watched when I was younger basically presents that scene as pitch black. There is no contrast or blue hue to it. It’s just darkness.
Jeff:
As a deviant who purchased this on Apple tv, because again, I have a problem, I can confirm that the best quality version you can buy of this film, it is black. You cannot see anything for about a third of the movie.
Adam:
Yeah. There’s a long part in the second half of the movie that is just pretty much, you just have to adjust your TV basically if you actually want to see anything.
Jeff:
Yeah. That felt extremely generous. There was critique though Sano goes on to say, “still the spirit of the film outweighs its weaknesses. The desire to capture the inner lives of the character makes the great land of small a film in which both child and adult finds meaning.”
Adam:
Do they though?
Jeff:
I think we’re going to spend the rest of this episode and next week’s episode attempting to find meaning.
Adam:
Oh man, just like my life, right?
Jeff:
Precisely. There are, of course others that have better opinions than the official critics, and those are internet comments, which we have found on things like Amazon and IMDB.
Adam:
I cannot wait to hear these. I purposely didn’t read these when you sent them over earlier. So
Jeff:
Phenomenal going in completely sight unseen, so our first year is an IMDB review by Siouxsienova giving this film a 1 out of 10 rating. They go on to say, “film we disapprove of. Though details elude our memory, we recall an inexplicably cheerful little man and people in colored saran wrap. We fail to see what was “great” about the land, other than a volcano that burped glitter. Years after viewing it, we need only say the title to send everyone into fits of laughter and gagging sounds. This earns “The Great Land of Small” our resounding two thumbs way down. Were we to judge it on a star ratings system, it would be a black hole”
Adam:
Wow. Now, to be fair, there is no volcano that burps glitter. I think that would actually really drastically improve the great land. Instead, it is a creature that does the burping.
Jeff:
Yeah, slimo
Adam:
Of course. Slimo. Yeah. My hero. Obviously,
Jeff:
I aspire to be Slimo when I’m older. Maybe that was the moral or what they wanted you to take as a child. You too could grow up to be Slimo.
Adam:
Yeah, slim o be your own Slimo. Yeah.
Jeff:
Be the Slimo you want to see in the world.
Adam:
You know what I really took away about Slimo too was the costume or the
Jeff:
It is a puppet.
Adam:
The puppets that is Slimo really reminded me of the character Bill Paxton gets turned into in weird science. It’s basically Slimo
Jeff:
Totally,
Adam:
But they definitely put a lot of budget into creating slimo the puppet. I wonder if slime still exists.
Jeff:
Probably. There’s no way you could destroy it. That thing is huge.
Adam:
Is it though or it, did they shoot it with perspective to make it seem big?
Jeff:
That’s an interesting question. It could be a hand puppet, but I don’t know. Given everything I’ve seen in this film, given that there is basically zero practical effects at all beyond cutting things to make them look like they’ve disappeared or turned to different directions, I don’t know that they had the technology to make things look bigger than they appear.
Adam:
I feel like this could be a podcast unto itself finding slime.
Jeff:
Yeah.
Adam:
2025
Jeff:
GoFundMe number three…
Our next review, also an IMDB review, comes to us from Muppets1. I guess Muppets was already taken. Also giving this a one out of 10 rating with the title stupid movie gives nightmares. Muppets1 says, “This movie frightened me. It was an awful movie that should not be shown to little children if you want them to grow up as normal human beings. I saw it at a friend’s house, and everyone who saw it found it to be extremely disturbing. You barely see anything of the Great Land of Small except people turning into butterflies or being “slimo”d. I definitely rate this as one of the more unintelligent family films that has come out of Canada”
Adam:
I feel as though that review really undersells the great land because there was also baton, twirler jugglers,
Jeff:
Many jugglers.
Adam:
There was a parade though. It was a practice parade. There was a lot more happening in the great land of the small than just being slime mode.
Jeff:
Yeah. Keeper lives in a dungeon with his man dog.
Adam:
Yeah. Like a mirrored dungeon, oddly enough. Right. Hopefully we get back to that one.
Jeff:
Yeah. People are just getting railed on cob down there.
Adam:
It’s a tasty treat, man. Don’t knock till you tried it. Don’t yuck my yum.
Jeff:
It’s the only thing that states some people. Finally an anonymous. This is a rotten tomato reviewer that I loved, so I had to include it. This review is quote, “this movie is fucking disturbing. I was okay with it.”
Adam:
Fuck yeah, bud. I feel as though the more I lament about this movie, the more I kind of feel like it almost deserves to be compared to the work of somebody like David Lynch. There’s this real I dreamscape mentality, this alternative universe existing within our own, but yeah, it’s really not a good movie, but you can’t stop thinking about it.
Jeff:
My best belief, my best understanding, this feels like a movie where if you were to get several very well intentioned, very artistic qua folk, put them in a room, pipe that room full of LSDU gas and then have them write a movie about child empowerment, I think this is what happens.
Adam:
I would love to see remake the Great Land of Small and see his adaptation of this.
Jeff:
The best thing about that is that I could not tell you if it would be better or worse. The adaptation, I have no idea. Yeah,
Adam:
Or even if David Lynch redid it, would his adaptation be better or worse?
Jeff:
Oh, that would be upsetting. I think that would be even more upsetting In some ways.
Adam:
It would be funny if he just shot it scene for scene if it was just what they did to Psycho.
Jeff:
Oh, no. Okay. Yeah. No, I’m on board for that. David Lynch, I assume you listen to this podcast. Please do this. You can have this one for free. We don’t even want royalties.
Adam:
Also, David, if you’re out there, send me that red suit. Let’s save some money here,
Jeff:
Right? Yeah, please, David. Now, this is really only the start of our journey into the Great Land of Small, but unfortunately we need to call it a day, so I know. I know. So if you don’t want to get slime mode, make sure you tune back in next week, Monday morning when we will actually talk about the Absolute Bananas movie, the Great Land of Small.
Adam:
I Can’t wait. I personally hope you end this episode with one of the two theme songs they had written for this movie.
Jeff:
All right. Rolling
Great Land of Small theme song:
And You
Jeff:
And thus concludes another episode of Invalid Culture. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it or not. Either way, please take a second. If you haven’t to subscribe to our podcast on whatever platform you’re using, tell a Friend, and better yet, do you want to be a victim on the podcast, go onto our website, invalid culture.com. Submit your name. We would love to terrorize you with a bad movie. Have a bad movie of your own that you think that we should watch. Again, jump on our website, invalid culture.com, submit it, and we would love to watch the trash. Be sure to tune in again next week for part two where we will start to dig into the movie and find out whether or not it wins the coveted Jerry Lewis seal of approval
Mvll Crimes (theme song):
Arguing with strangers on the internet. Everyone is wrong. I just haven’t told them yet.
Transcript – Part 2
Jeff:
Previously on invalid culture.
The Great Land of Small theme song:
Keep your eyes wide open, can you see the special beings? You will never know what you’ll be seeing. If you let them show you…
Jeff:
You are listening to Invalid Culture, a podcast dedicated to excavating the strangest and most baffling media representations of disability. This podcast is all about staring into the abyss of pop culture adjacent films that never quite broke through because well, they’re just awful. So buckle up folks. The following content is rated I for invalid.
Mvll Crimes (theme song):
I’m arguing with strangers on the internet not going out today because I’m feeling too upset. Arguing with strangers on the, and I’m winning. And I’m winning!
Jeff:
Welcome back to another episode of Invalid Culture, part two of the Great Land of Small. So glad that you are back. We are joined once again by our co-host. Adam, how you doing, Adam?
Adam:
I’m good, Jeff. I’m good. I just got back from a rainbow trip back from the Great Land of Small.
Jeff:
Oh good. You caught the rainbow.
Adam:
Yeah, I caught the rainbow. I wasn’t late like Michael was and I made it for the birthday celebration.
Jeff:
Can I ask you, what is the wheelchair accommodations like on rainbow flights?
Adam:
Very lovely. Lots of large entryways. There’s really no limitations, no stairs at all. The only thing, the incline is a little challenging, especially at the starting point.
Jeff:
Right, but they didn’t break your wheelchair like every other airline in the world.
Adam:
No, no, no, no, no. They were quite accommodating in that fashion. But let me tell you something, there is glitter everywhere. Everywhere. It’s like going to the beach.
Jeff:
Absolutely. Well, as I said, this is part two, which means it is time for us to get analytical. So let’s talk a little bit about the Great Land of Small. Now for those of you who have not watched the movie, our film begins in the wilderness where we meet a surly magical something or other, maybe leprechaun, maybe not named Fritz, who has returned to Earth to verify whether or not humans are still terrible. Before Fritz had learned about Donald Trump, he misplaces his bag of gold dust while escaping several hunters that are led by barman Flanagan cut to New York City where baseball enthusiast David is refusing to visit his grandparents unless can bring his dog along with him, David, his sister Jenny, and his single and ready to mingle Mother Linda, all packed into a bus and drive to the mystical land of Quebec. It is here where his grandpa gaslights the children into believing that magical creatures exist, but only if you truly believe otherwise they are invisible to you. Get it? It’s a metaphor for the French Canadian experience.
Adam:
Oh boy. Yeah. The start of this movie is quite challenging, although it’s very entertaining to see them really try and wedge as much acrobatics in the beginning of this film to just set the baseline of what you’re going to experience in the Great Land and that grandfather. Best of intentions, that guy. Oh, absolutely. He wanted to share the magic of the world with his grandkids.
Jeff:
Yeah, absolutely. Now, okay, so let’s talk a little bit about Fritz and his introduction into the film. He is sort of just laying around in nature. He loses his bag of magic gold powder and it’s at this point that we’re explained, it’s told to us that Fritz, for reasons that are never explained, has access to five magical spells that he is allowed to perform.
Adam:
And I feel like we need to also address one factor too in that we both, I think we paused the movie, we watched the movie the first time together, the exposition in this movie is handled quite awkwardly. There’s a moment where Fritz loses his bag of gold dust and literally says to the camera, oh no, my gold dust fell out. What should I do? Moments like that happen a lot in this movie where it’s like, no, obviously Fritz just dropped his gold. I don’t know why he’s saying this out loud.
Jeff:
Yeah. The movie at the exact same time, both imagines its audience as completely unable to follow what’s happening while also presuming that the audience is fully literate in the magical world that it is set in. So of course, Fritz is invisible to the hunter that stumbles across his bag of gold dust, which is perhaps kind of a bit of a fitting allegory to some experiences of disablement in which the bar owner literally does not know you exist.
Adam:
No, because he can’t see you through the bar that he’s sitting behind. Yes. That is something I didn’t consider until my second viewing actually is how Fritz navigates the world by only being seen by humans who may not have been taught to see disability as a negative. You know what I mean? Kids often approach me and ask questions that are very innocent and unknowing, whereas adults who have been taught that disability is a negative often just ignore my existence. So that little allegory may be the most in-depth quality of disability representation in this film. Otherwise it’s pretty non-existent in my opinion.
Jeff:
And also might not have been intentional.
Adam:
No, no. I think that’s also the odd thing is in all the promotion and all the write-ups that I read for this film, Fritz is referred to as a leprechaun, but in the movie, characters are stopped short when they almost say the word leprechaun and instead they say one of them. And so the really odd thing too we were just discussing off mic, is that there is a bizarre number of Irish names in this movie, Flanagans, Patrick…It’s quite bizarre because they stopped short of identifying the one true Irish character, the leprechaun. It was like, no, that’s too odd. We can’t go ahead with that, but let’s just name everybody an Irish name.
Jeff:
Right. And this is small town Quebec, but they are in Quebec.
Adam:
Yeah, yeah. In the eastern townships, somewhere in between Montreal and Sherbrooke is our rough estimation of where they are. And so there is no Jean, there is no Michelle. Instead Patrick Kelly. I forget what the mom’s name is?
Jeff:
Linda.
Adam:
Yeah,
Jeff:
I think that’s an interesting point because this could gesture toward a little fan theory that I have, which is that Quebec in the film is not Quebec. Quebec in the film is actually English speaking Canada slash America populated by the Irish and the land of small is actually Quebec.
Adam:
Oh, that would make sense why…so?
Jeff:
Hence why as we will later, well, okay, let’s move forward. So while frolicking could in the forest, David and Jenny stumble upon light bending magical figure Fritz with some very interesting colors being placed upon the screen.
Adam:
We kind of differed there because I felt like that camera trick with the rainbow effect was very, very impressive. I felt as though it wasn’t just merely a lens on the camera. There was some special effect quality to it, although the effect doesn’t last very long, so you don’t get to really bathe in all its glory
Jeff:
To me…I think they just sliced a gel from Aliko light and taped it to the camera lens. It’s very angular and the people were moving and the camera’s kind of moving. So it’s unclear, but it looks fairly static egg. I’m unclear. Unfortunately, because of Fritz’s futile search to get his gold powder back from Flanagan, Fritz has missed his ride on the rainbow to get back home. And as a result, like many of us have been forced to do, had to spend a night in Quebec taking pity on him. David and Jenny invite Fritz back to Grandpa’s house for about 14 sandwiches and two bottles of Pepsi. Fritz will eventually spend the night for a magical sleepover after which the gang decides that they must enlist the support of mimic a strange man who speaks in brine and lives in a shack down by the river.
Adam:
Before we get to the mimic thing, I wanted to interject with, we skipped over the pop scene where they reenact a scene from Willy Wonka with the bubbles that make you weightless and float, and then there’s also a quality to this film that is a big tip of the hat to the Wizard of Oz as well, which we’ll get to in a bit. But there were a few very notable classic cinema references in this movie, which makes me feel as though like this wasn’t just a haphazard attempt that the writer really did leave everything on the page here. He went deep. I feel.
Jeff:
Well, references or copyright infringement. It is hard to say. Disney might be looking at some of this magic powder animation and feeling it’s a little Fantasia
Adam:
Or a little Tinker Bell too. Right, right. The fairy dust. Yeah. Anyway, sorry to interrupt you again.
Jeff:
No, absolutely. So Fritz spends the night for this magical sleepover and the gang determines that they must use this man mimic to help them. Now on their way to mimic, they are chased by flatheads men narrowly escape at a certain death by jumping in a canoe and heading down the river almost immediately. They almost die in some river rapids and Fritz is required to use one of his five magic spells, which I believe this is his third spell that he has used now maybe fourth, to transport them to safety, also known as Montreal apparently, because they are now in the Olympic stadi…sorry, they’re now in the Great Land of Small.
Adam:
Yeah. The architecture is very hard to miss in the great land of small, but it’s very familiar to those Canadian listeners out there, the slopes, the angles, the off white color of everything.
Jeff:
Immediately when they arrive in the great land of small, we are we’re watching it. And immediately you notice that it is both like an internal, that they’ve built a set, but it’s also outside, but it’s clearly natural light. And so when we’re watching it, we’re like, where did they find this open air studio? And then almost immediately, once we get deeper into the great land of small, we’re like, oh man, I bet you, and sure enough, yes, this was filmed in the Olympic Stadium, the pride and joy of the Montreal Expos at the time. RIP
Adam:
David would be sad and his baseball dreams.
Jeff:
Yeah, crushed. Yeah. Now, as a baseball fan, how did he not know that he was in the Olympic stadium?
Adam:
It’s a different world bud. Different world, the rainbow.
Jeff:
There were no Montreal Expos in this universe.
Adam:
You know what? That’s also funny because we were commenting about David’s hat looking very weird on his head. Why wasn’t he wearing either a Brooklyn hat or an Expos hat?
Jeff:
Right? He was wearing a red felt baseball ish hat. I understand. Not going to put branding on it, but why this wasn’t a Yankees hat or a Mets hat is kind of hilarious to me.
Adam:
Right? Or yeah, it really, I don’t know. They missed an opportunity with that one.
Jeff:
When it comes to magical powers, Fritz, as I said, lead it up to this point, has used a few spells which seem to be conjured by saying little rhymes pretty on brand. And from what we’re able to tell, he is able to a drop people into holes in the ground, which he does to Flanagan
Adam:
With a very hilarious forward and rewind effect and then forward again. So it appears as though he’s being dropped multiple times.
Jeff:
So that’s one of his spells. Another spell that he casts is to astral project David’s dog from the pound. Now my read on this, my understanding of the text is that his dog is not physically there. This is an astral projection, but there’s sort of a commentary that’s made that he’s not actually there, but he is experiencing it with them and they are able to touch him.
Adam:
True. They do engage and they even have to use the leash on him when they’re walking to mimics shack on the river,
Jeff:
Right? Because that dog will run away immediately if possible.
Adam:
Yeah, I believe it was a lab or a retriever.
Jeff:
Yeah, it was definitely going to run away the minute it could possibly going to find a tasty treat in the forest because it is on our way to Quebec that it is disclosed that Flanagan and his hunting friends are not just after caribou. Adam, what are they hunting for?
Adam:
Well, there’s a theme when the kids and mother arrive in Quebec to visit the grandparents where the grandparents pick them up in the bus at the bus station during wait, fall because all the trees have turned color in a convertible with the top down. So they’re driving down country roads and highways with top down and convertible when they come across a roadblock with a police officer who is berating Flanagan and his cronies for hunting at night with flashlights. At which point Flanagan says they are not hunting caribou illegally. They are actually after rabbit eggs,
Jeff:
Rabbit eggs,
Adam:
Rabbit eggs are Flanagan’s bread and butter, apparently a real curve ball. I really didn’t see that one coming.
Jeff:
So when this happened, I thought I just misheard it and I went back and looked and no, they said rabbit eggs and it is presented completely straight and the police officer is like, oh, well that makes sense. And it is. I have no idea if this is supposed to be a joke, if it’s an absurdist line. Is it like the police officer doesn’t understand hunting and this is just a funny little prank? Or are there really rabbit eggs in the field?
Adam:
Maybe they aren’t mammalian. The really peculiar thing too is they say it multiple times in the scene and then they don’t say it again at all during the movie or reference these rabbit eggs.
Jeff:
No, it never comes up again. Which leads me to wonder, are there scenes that were left on the cutting room floor of this film, which boggles the mind?
Adam:
I wonder what the director’s cut of this thing could have looked like.
Jeff:
Well, there’s another thing that was never really addressed, which is Linda is a single mom and there appears to be a will they or won’t they with the police officer that they meet on the roadblock because apparently they knew each other growing up and maybe there’s something happening and no, that storyline leads nowhere.
Adam:
No, and there is multiple references of hanging out with a dad, but we don’t get dad’s name. We don’t see dad. There’s really just only a reference to you’re going to see your father next week type of thing,
Jeff:
Which is a really interesting part of this film, I will say, because it is like a normalization of divorce from a Quebec company, which of course in the quiet revolution you’ll know that this is actually not an insignificant thing. Talking about divorce and going against Catholic scripture
Adam:
And for the mid eighties too, right? I guess maybe that was a slight dig at her living a sinful life in New York City moving away from Quebec
Jeff:
Or they’re aligning with the quiet revolution and the pushback, the secularism of Quebec that comes in the seventies and eighties. This is just normal. It’s just a normal thing. We don’t need to address the father because he is insignificant. So we move into the final phase of the film where we arrive at the Great Land of Small, which essentially is a Cirque de Soleil fever Dream meets an abstract 1984 concrete hellscape. We discover that Fritz is not the king, but rather his twin brother is the king of this land. And the people seem to spend most of their time doing acrobatics, juggling and being turned into butterflies. But there is just one problem. Once you enter the great land of small, you can never leave. As a result, David and Jenny are scheduled by the king and queen to be slim mode, which is unclear if this is a punishment or a reward, but it essentially consists of being fed to a giant rock blob that spits magic, morphin gold dust onto you and turns you into something else.
Adam:
So the thing about that is in watching it last night, the king and queen make a quick reference to not being able to have children of their own. And the queen says how nice it would be to have a little girl and the king says how nice it would be to have a little boy, and then they decide that the children must be slime mowed so that they can live their eternally. And so it’s kind of a kidnap plot
Jeff:
And it’s also, as I said, this is confusing because when we get to the slime scene, they are sliming a woman who wishes to become a butterfly. That’s what she’s wanting to become, so boom, slim mode. However, we also have two individuals who are in an argument and they hit slim O for being in an argument
Adam:
At some sort of resolution as though the process of being slim Oed is going to absolve the situation that they find themselves in.
Jeff:
Very unclear. Now, Fritz, the selfless magic figure that he is uses his last magical spell to transport David and Jenny as well as new characters keeper and man dog munch out of the land of small and back into the forests of Quebec. However, this will then doom Fritz to have to navigate the Canadian Social Assistance program for disabled people the rest of his life. There is ultimately only one chance for Fritz to get back home, which is to reclaim the magic powder from Flanagan. The bargain Flanagan, as you imagine has become drunk with magical power and is ploting to take over the world leading to a barely visible confrontation on the aptly titled Black Mountain, ultimately Flat again, the lights after almost clearing his daughter and the gold dust is returned to its rightful owner. The film even eventually wraps with Fritz saying goodbye to his friends from the great land of small paper and dog Man Munch who take the little powder back to the king and queen Fritz, however fits his return and instead rides off into the sunset with mimic a relationship that they will never be able to report or risk losing their disability support benefits.
Adam:
I really love how you tie that in. That’s beautiful. Well done, Jeff.
Jeff:
Now one thing I do want to talk about in the conclusion of this film, so the movie sets itself up as being a morality play of some variety, but as I can understand the story, what is the moral of this story?
Adam:
I have no idea. Other than kids running around with their leprechaun buddy and a harrowing canoe trip. I don’t know. No one seemed to really learn a lesson other than maybe Flanagan,
Jeff:
But there’s sort of the lesson of youthful innocence and being open to new experiences maybe, but that’s never really addressed or dealt with, and also it ends with this crushing reality that Fritz is now trapped away from home living in exile in the forests of Quebec,
Adam:
But he seems really okay with it. They are prancing through that meadow at the end,
Jeff:
But why were David and Jenny not allowed to know that he was trapped at that point? I understand beforehand, he doesn’t want the children to stop him from using his last wish, but once you’re there, he’s like, no, no, protect them from this terrible reality. I’m now trapped in. We’ll let them think that I’m leaving and then I will scuttle away through the tall grass and write off with mimic.
Adam:
There is just so many questions left on the Answered in this film because I think they felt that they were going to wow us with some sort of magical experience that leads you to forget about all these unwrapped up storyline,
Jeff:
Right? No, Cirque du Soleil is enough. Have you been to Cirque du Soleil? It’s enough. You don’t need anything else.
Adam:
Look at these batons. We have so many batons and they’re twirling.
Jeff:
That’s all you need. They’re children. They don’t know anything. As I said, this movie equally seems to treat its audience as hyper literate and completely unaware of what’s happening at the exact same time.
Adam:
It just really weird, some really bizarre, maybe directorial choices. You would think that if Fritz also is a leprechaun, that maybe you would have your actor do a bad Irish accent, but they don’t even attempt to that.
Jeff:
No, no. And they dress him sort of like a medieval squire kind of…
Adam:
Yeah. Yeah. There’s no real leprechaun qualities to Fritz as a leprechaun. There’s some gold, but really you wouldn’t be surprised to see Michael walking around a Ren Fair in that outfit. You’d be like, oh,
Jeff:
Absolutely.
Adam:
Sweet outfit, bro. Yeah.
Jeff:
Yeah, right.
Adam:
Absolutely. No one would be like, oh, that leprechaun outfit is tight.
Jeff:
I also am confused by they seem to be gesturing toward a moral of absolute power. Corrupts absolutely, and that you should reject power because it’s dangerous. But I also don’t know that that’s the case. Flanagan gets the powder, goes crazy with it, goes to Black Mountain, ties up Mimic to a tree, and appears to be prepared to torture him or murder him, I’m not sure. And then his daughter comes and is like, wait, no, stop. And he blasts her with magic and then it’s like, what have I done and runs down and it is like, oh, my daughter here, have the dust back. It’s too dangerous.
Adam:
Yeah, there’s really no consequences for anyone in this film other than Fritz who is now stuck in Quebec,
Jeff:
The most Irish town in Quebec
Adam:
Of all the small towns. He had to land in the most Irish of them all where the local is called Flanagans.
Jeff:
Part of me also wonders if maybe this was intended as a setup to a sequel, but were we going to get another story that was about the return to the great land of small where Fritz is trying to get back and he has to do some sort of task and learn some sort of lesson about himself and away we go,
Adam:
That would guarantee us a more slim o film time and explore the relationship between Fritz and Mimic in that quick Riverside abode. Yeah,
Jeff:
I hope that they’re lovers. That is my deep desire for the end of this film.
Adam:
It is neither confirmed nor dismissed.
Jeff:
Precisely. It is a potentiality,
Adam:
But they definitely, at the beginning of the film, they already kind of know each other.
Jeff:
Yeah, they’re friends.
Adam:
They have a history together. And that also brings up something we have yet to discuss is mimic as a character, as a potential person with disability or racist stereotype of an indigenous Quebecois.
Jeff:
So I want to dig all the way into this.
Adam:
Yeah. I feel as though this at its core is the only true representation in this movie because as we’ve addressed, Michael Anderson’s character is never really as one, the character. He’s even playing a leprechaun or two as a little person or person with disability. And so in that aspect, I feel like the representation is great where I feel like we’re going to dig into the nitty gritty here.
Jeff:
So let’s talk a little bit about Mimic because, so first and foremost, when I read the synopsis and it referred to Mimic as being indigenous, I had a bit of a double take because that I did not catch that when I was reading. I didn’t know that that was intended, which also makes me wonder if that even is intended or if this was something that was projected by the person who wrote the synopsis. Mimiced to me is presented as this sort of gesture fool character if you kind of toxin rhyme. But it has these sort of insights, and so everyone thinks that Mimic is crazy or that he’s simple, that he doesn’t know what’s happening in the world, but he does have this insight that only the viewer are able to see because Mimic seems to exist somewhere between the two worlds between Quebec and the Great Land of Small because he has awareness and can understand and see these invisible creatures. He still has belief in order to see the magical creatures. He has some sort of relationship with this magical stallion that is wandering the Quebec woods as well. He seems to know the horse or is friends with it potentially. He rides it at times, but doesn’t seem to be magic himself.
Adam:
No, no, no. And I’m going to say what a non colonialist character. He exists outside of town. He definitely has a different perception of the space he’s in. And even to the point when he comes into town, flanagan’s cronies try and beat ’em up and run ’em off. And this is where I get into the stereotype is there’s a scene where Mimic saddles up to the bar and quickly downs a pint before he gets kicked out. When Flanagan comes up to his daughter and says, I thought I told you not to serve him as though he’s not supposed to consume alcohol, which is
Jeff:
Interesting
Adam:
…a stereotype, and when Flanagan’s cronies are berating him, there is an assumption that he’s just this foolish character stumbling around, and I feel as though I didn’t realize it certainly when I was a kid, and certainly in the first watching, but it wasn’t until I read that synopsis that you posted that it clicked in that he actually isn’t supposed to be projected as having disability. He’s supposed to be a racist stereotype in Quebec, and that’s kind of what I took away from it too, especially, but also
Jeff:
Accepting. The audience are supposed to accept mimic.
Adam:
Oh yeah.
Jeff:
As a good person.
Adam:
Yeah. He doesn’t have ill intent in any of his interactions within the film at all, but it would also kind of speak to the fact of why Mimic can see Fritz is because he has a different sense of maybe spiritual connection to the land, right? So he has this innocence, innocence, maybe non colonialist view of the land and of the beings within the land that allows him to see,
Jeff:
Yeah, this is I think a completely plausible explanation for mimic. I think that we could also though interpret Mimic as being a mad character, as being the mad person who appears foolish, but has insight and is a useful character because of the way that they see the world differently and how they exist outside the world.
Adam:
Oh, I was just going to add to that, the projection of childish qualities onto an adult, right?
Jeff:
Yeah. Another major part of it, he is projected, he’s really marked as being kind of childlike, potentially having an intellectual disability of some variety where he just doesn’t seem like any other adult in the film.
Adam:
No. And even at one point riding away on a child’s BMX bike.
Jeff:
Right. You literally using a child’s bike. Okay, I’m sorry. I think we need to talk a little bit about some of the tropes in this film. So as you stated, I agree, the film itself doesn’t necessarily mark our main character Fritz as a disabled character necessarily. However, I think this movie does fall to the common trope of casting disabled people as being magical characters in some way, and the bodily difference being used as a way to signify a difference within the person. Note that Fritz is regularly referred to as a creature, as a figure, as anything but a human, despite the fact that of course he’s being played by a literal human.
Adam:
It’s also kind, it’s always kind of cringe when you hear a little person being cast as one of these kind of stereotype characters, and it’s something that we really, I know personally, I really applaud actors like Peter Dinklage from avoiding being cast as these kind of mythical characters. Although at the same point, I’m going to argue that the way that the stereotype of a leprechaun is portrayed in this film, it manages to miss a lot of those kind of cringe moments. I feel. Even though Michael Anderson has played leprechauns repeatedly in his professional life, I have not seen those performances. However, this one, it felt different. It wasn’t like the leprechaun you see portrayed at Molly Bloom’s downtown London on St. Patrick’s Day. Right. College kid puking on the railroad tracks. Yeah,
Jeff:
Precisely.
Adam:
And so that’s where it gets tricky for me because I do agree with you, but I feel as though maybe not on purpose. They handled it really well.
Jeff:
I think the other thing to be said on this trope of the sort of magically disabled person and the fact that they don’t necessarily identify as a disabled person within the text, I also think given the fact that this is called Tales for All, and it is this sort of morality story that are being told to try to help children to understand their world and develop a moral compass, that is a good one. Allegedly, I imagine that the inclusion of disabled people within this text was designed not necessarily as an equity feature. I feel very confident that they were like, Ooh, we should get a disabled person in this film. I let’s get tech disability in here, and showed people it children, oh, look, you could be friends. You could be a friend with a disabled guy, and maybe they have magic powers. And I think that behind the scenes, I think possibly leans really hard into that trope,
Adam:
And I feel as though that might be the reason why my mother tried to make me watch this so many times. It’s like, see, even Michael Anderson could save the day,
Jeff:
But he doesn’t. The only reason the day is saved is because, so the daughter of her own actions was on her way to Black Mountain, so whether or not the children returned Flanagan was going to give up the powder, he was going to almost kill his daughter regardless. They had no impact on the end of this movie
Adam:
Other than he brought the kids back.
Jeff:
He did bring the kids back, but he also brought the kids there,
Adam:
Although his bringing the kids there happened by happenstance because they were being chased and
Jeff:
They almost died in the river. Yeah.
Adam:
He saved the kids by taking them out of those precarious River Rapids. And so he both
Jeff:
Which they got to on the way to getting his powder back that he lost,
Adam:
Oh boy.
Jeff:
Fritz might be the villain of this film
Adam:
In a roundabout way…he may have been the bad guy.
Jeff:
He both caused the problem and did not solve the problem. By the end of the film.
Adam:
He really, really kind of fucked himself over at the end. I mean, yes and no. Who’s to say what beautiful life he and Mimic created
Jeff:
In the shack by the river? That’s completely fair. Now, the other trope that I wanted to talk a little bit about is this really common division between an ostensibly able bodied regular world and a not regular segregated disabled world. And we see this a lot in films where disabled characters are kind of represented as being detached from the normal world. They live in their own kind of spaces. They only date each other. They don’t marry outside of disabled community. They’re educated together. And I feel that this film sets up the notion that the regular people, the Irish people,
Adam:
The Irish
Jeff:
And the different world of the magical characters live in the land of small, which is also the only place where we see little people and other sort of disabled people in general is in the land of small. So we have this distinction that those people live somewhere else.
Adam:
I didn’t get that initially from watching this movie. It’s only in discussing it that I realized that delineation. And I think that’s largely to do because the only other person with visible disability in the great land of small is Michael Anderson playing his own brother. Even when there are little people dispersed in the crowd when they’re arriving and in the King’s Court, it’s tough to tell who is a child and who is a little person, both because of the film quality and just the outfits that everybody’s wearing, those ridiculous colored onesies, the French are always going on about in their cinema. And that’s really where I felt was a stumbling point for me getting that connection. But there really is, and then it also kind of feeds into that whole, maybe you’re going to go on about this to the trope that people with disabilities are super abled, that we are special in our own ways and that we have a magical world unto our own,
Jeff:
And it’s a magical power that is both amazing and awe inspiring while also profoundly limited because there are moments in which as they are fleeing, Fritz needs to be literally lifted and carried as they run runoff into the wild.
Adam:
Yeah, I forgot about that.
Jeff:
Both limited and powerful at the exact same time, which is interesting.
Adam:
Why didn’t you use the spell in that moment? Exactly.
Jeff:
Yeah, it’s a question. And similarly, if the Great Land of Small has the ability to generate these spells, why would you not just have an unlimited number of them or a much higher number than five, for instance, so that if you did need to get away, you could just teleport?
Adam:
That’s the thing of being given three wishes and your first wish being that you have in limited wishes
Jeff:
I should have more wishes. Just like…slimo half of the population of the great land of small, and you’re going to have all the wishes. You need
Adam:
To go back to that again too. Slimo’s magical power is never fully explained.
Jeff:
Not at all.
Adam:
He just spits gold dust at people and things happen,
Jeff:
Turns them into things. Yeah.
Adam:
Yeah. There’s a whole spinoff right there. HBO should get on it.
Jeff:
I think that this does fall to the typical trope of the super Crip, as you mentioned. The other one that I think it falls to is the proximity of disability in children. As you mentioned, disabled people in this film are interspersed in crowds with children, nearly indistinguishably. Fritz becomes friends with the children. And the only other adult that Fritz is actually really a friend with mostly is Mimic, who also might be marked as a disabled character. And then the people in the land of small like Keeper and Munch are also friends of his, but he immediately connects with the children, but friends them, they form this relationship. And so I think that there is this proximity to Childness that is definitely reinforced within this movie, probably unintentionally.
Adam:
Oh, completely. And I think the intention there was that the innocence of the child is why the connection was there, although it definitely reinforces the trope of
Jeff:
The naivete
Adam:
Being childlike inequality. Yeah,
Jeff:
Absolutely. Now, as many of you will know, listeners of the show, we have a completely empirical scientific methodology, which we use to evaluate every film completely scientific in nature. Much like golf, we use a inverted rating score. So the lower the score, the better a film is. So let’s see how the Great Land of Small does when put to the test of the invalid culture rating system.
Adam:
Let’s do this thing
Jeff:
First up. On a scale of one to five, with five being the least accurate, how accurately does this film portray disability?
Adam:
Okay, so I’m going to go with a two. I was going to come into this one with a one just because I felt as though the movie really didn’t address disability at all, and thereby doing a great job. But I feel as though by not addressing it and leaving disability as a certain ambiguity that runs through the whole film, it actually serves as a disservice. So though they had the best of intentions, I think it also was a flaw. So that’s where I’m landed too.
Jeff:
Yeah. Well, we are completely aligned on this. I also was originally going in with the thought that this might be a one. However, I think if we read Mimic as a typical fool character, and I think if we take a little bit of a stretch, if we take the notion that Fritz is perhaps connected to sort of the jester little person of medieval times, I mean, he is dressed like a weird medieval dude, and I think he’s supposed to be funny, although I did not find him as such. Then I think this is probably a two. It’s not the worst by any means, but it’s not, I don’t think it’s clean either.
Adam:
No, no. There is definitely no quality of a tip Toes, Gary Oman on his knees, quality to this film, although casting a little person as a leprechaun really never ceases to make me cringe a little.
Jeff:
Yeah, you’re going to eat a little punishment for that.
Adam:
Yeah.
Jeff:
Okay. On a scale of one to five, with five being the hardest, how hard was it for you to get through this film?
Adam:
I’ve watched a lot of bad and challenging movies a lot, and I would probably rate this as a three, mostly because of the quantity of film that is almost in sheer darkness, that leaves a lot to the imagination and makes the second half of the film really challenging when you’re expecting the most action and it’s kind of delivering in some action, you just can’t see much of it.
Jeff:
So I’ve also watched a lot of terrible movies. I’m going to be honest, this was pretty rough. This is a rough thing to get through. The pacing was all over the place. I didn’t understand it often. I was constantly asking questions of what is happening in this film. I don’t know. However, it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever watched. It was a reasonable children’s movie. I think especially I’m made for tv, so I’m going to be generous and I’m going to give this a four.
Adam:
Oh, wow, okay. I definitely know where you’re coming from with that though, I just think personally, I felt Slimer brought a lot.
Jeff:
I mean, I spent about 40 minutes of this film trying to understand what the heck of Rabbit Egg was, and that’s not a good sign.
Adam:
I mean, it’s a tasty Easter treat
Jeff:
In Quebec. On a scale of one to five, with five being the maximum, how often did you laugh at things that weren’t supposed to be funny?
Adam:
I really wasn’t left laughing a lot here, so probably a two.
Jeff:
Yeah. I also gave this a two. It wasn’t the funniest thing unintentionally that I’ve seen, but there were some moments that were, I think, iconically kind of hilarious in ways that they weren’t supposed to be. I mean, the Butterfly people, I don’t think that was supposed to be funny. I think that was supposed to be whimsical
Adam:
Munchin’ the cobs
Jeff:
That I think was intended to be funny, I think.
Adam:
Yeah. Yeah. Although having a grown man yell, oh, he really loves his cobs. I think I was laughing at it for the wrong reasons though.
Jeff:
Yep. I think that’s fair. There were some moments, there were some moments, and in fact, I think also the complete blackout for about a quarter of the film was also objectively kind of hilarious,
Adam:
And we talked about that too, where we suspect it was shot in daylight and perhaps over underexposed in processing to achieve the look as though it was shot at night. They may messed that processing up slightly
Jeff:
Very possible. And last but certainly not least, on a scale of one to five, with five being the most, how many steps back has this film put Disabled people?
Adam:
You know what? I don’t think it did much. It neither Elevated nor declined, so I’m going to say two, and it’s not a one because they cast a little person. As a leprechaun, it’s still cringe.
Jeff:
Yeah. We’re aligned again on this one. I also gave it a two. I think this was relatively harmless, even if it was fairly cringey. And I think in part, most people will not remember this as a disability text. They might remember it as a horrific film, a thing of nightmares, but probably not because of disability.
Adam:
It really does kind of play out as something I would think Crispin Glover dreams about. This would come out of Crispin Glover’s Dream Journal. I’ll put it simply of all the movies I’ve watched, it certainly is one of them.
Jeff:
Yeah, exactly. So after tabulating our scores, we can officially confirm The Great Land of Small Drummer. Please Comes out as regrets. I have a few, the second lowest on our scale,
Adam:
And I’m not surprised by that.
Jeff:
It feels right. I would say
Adam:
It does. It’s a comfy fit. This movie, I feel like. I definitely don’t recommend it to anybody unless you’re looking for a weird film to watch. But it didn’t leave me feeling like I needed to cause a riot either.
Jeff:
Yeah, it is fully forgettable. It’s not art, but I don’t think any crimes have been committed.
Adam:
I might say that rainbow scene, it might be the closest thing to Art this movie had.
Jeff:
And this concludes another episode of Invalid Culture. Thank you for joining us. I hope you enjoyed it or not. Did you have a film you would like for us to cover on the pod, or even better? Do you want to be a victim on invalid culture? How to Wear to our website, invalid culture.com and submit. We would love to hear from you. That’s it for this episode. Catch you next month. And until then, stay invalid.
Mvll Crimes (theme song):
Arguing with strangers on the Internet…everyone is wrong. I just haven’t told them yet.
