Skammerens datter (2015) Reviews

• Danish fantasy film of international standards

  minmagi502015-05-31

  Just watched Skammerens Datter (The Shamer's Daughter) yesterday with a friend. We are both close to retirement - and we both enjoyed the film immensely!!!!! Read the books many years ago so the plot was a little bit blurred in our memories. It was a film of very high standard - very exciting and it caught us into it's medieval/fantastic universe right on. Beautiful settings - wish I knew where the locations were! The towns, landscapes, buildings and castles were fantastic and very credible. The plot unfolded maybe a little too fast. There was little time to get to know the persons. I missed a little more time to establish the connections/friendships between Nico and Dina, Rosa and Dina, the girls and våbenmesteren, Mester Magnus and fru Petri. Also the relationship between Drakan and his mother lacked depth - even though it was clear, she was important to him and had an unhealthy influence on him. It wasn't made quite clear enough, that HER revenge was the very reason for the son's (Drakan's) ambitions and murders, because Drakan's father (the king) wouldn't marry her. But all in all - you won't regret watching this film - you'll feel highly entertained. Astonishing special effects - and I do wonder how much of the towns, buildings and landscapes are real or created in the computer! I do look forward to the next films in the series!!!!!!

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• Danish YA Book Brought to Life

  alisonc-12015-07-18

  Dina (Rebecca Emilie Sattrup) has no friends; nobody wants to be around the Shamer's daughter and her mother Melussina (Maria Bonnevie) is viewed by all as a witch, necessary perhaps but a witch nonetheless. And Dina has inherited her mother's gifts, for good and for ill. When the ruling family of the castle and town of Dunark are brutally murdered, it seems the deed was done by the eldest son Nico (Jakob Oftebro), but he refuses to admit guilt and so Melussina is called to "see" his guilt. She fails, and so high- ranking Draken (Peter Plaugborg) brings Dina to the town, but she too fails to elicit guilt in Nico. Draken, however, is determined to condemn Nico and take control of the town, and he not only has most of the ranking officers on his side, but a nasty surprise in the castle's dungeons - dragons! Can Dina find allies to help save herself and her mother? Or will the dragons eat them all?....This is a wonderfully medieval-styled film, with well-realized characters and a very strong female lead, plus some really terrific dragons (more lizard-like than we've seen of late). The film is based on the first of a well-loved Danish YA series, The Shamer Chronicles by Lene Kaaberol, and on the basis of this adaptation, I think the books would be well worth seeking out in translation. At turns dark and humorous, "The Shamer's Daughter" is a solid, action-packed and yet quite touching and emotional film, well worth finding if you can!

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• Great for children.

  omg_922015-03-29

  Awesome for kids - but if you are 12+ you will feel like you are reading a children's book, which isn't the case with the actual book. As a reader of the books, and so a fan of the series, I went and saw the film with high expectations, and hoping for a sense of ''breathtaking''. This was, however, unfortunately not what happened. In my opinion, the acting and setup seems like a theater from public school 5th grade. Of course it's child actors who play the more significant roles. But if you can't find children with skills, one should simply make the characters a few years older. But fortunately there are the skilled and seasoned adult actors, or are there? These tanned actors work equally as if they were extras in a school play. The animations and props were good, and it certainly does not resemble a B-movie. But I hope that a film company with a somewhat higher budget, sees the potential of the extraordinary storyline and therefore makes a re-make of it. If you have not read the books, I think that the film may be a bit confusing and seem shallow, with a bad plot. Looking forward to ''Skammertegnet'' - if this were to be produced of course.

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• Hurry, hurry, let's get this one over with...

  thniels2016-01-30

  First things first: the books are fabulous... There! This movie - not so much. From here on it is easy to fall into the ubiquitous "the-book-was-better-than-the-movie-duh" trap, because this usually falls into the apples and oranges category. This is not what was wrong here. The books are immensely detailed and thought through. Nothing happens out of the blue and for no reason. In other words: there is a stringent plot course from start to finish with very little meandering. That seems to have vanished completely in the movie. If you know the books, you know *why* things happen. Why Dina does what she does and meet who she meets - in short; we get to know her very well and, just as importantly, her family. Here she apparently out of the blue befriends a drunkard assassin, a hard boiled armourer and a powder wielding mini-merlin, all willing to die for her for no reason whatsoever. Perhaps they mixed up the synopsis and the script when filming. One thing is certain. It is going to be immensely difficult to continue the story with gigantic build-up pieces missing. As for the scenery mostly everything is spotless. Absolutely wonderful and for the most part beautifully filmed. And, by the way, the dragons are rendered verbatim out of the book as vile little buggers more closely related to primitive rats, albeit rather large, than the mercurial aerosol cans dragons are more often portrayed as.

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• Great movie-- but no ending

  Snootz2019-01-26

  The "shame" of this movie is that it is so very well done-- then drops the audience to end credits, with no ending. The audience is not notified of this ahead of time. According to Wikipedia: "The second part of the saga 'Skammerens Datter II: Slangens Gave' is currently in post production as of 2018 and is set to premiere on February 7, 2019" Okay, wonderful. Feb 7 is just around the corner. Looking forward to it. When we find out if the *sequel* has an ending or drops us like a dead toad again... I might come back and re-rate this. Or I might not. The directing, acting, settings are all superb. Storyline is unique, plot line captivating. Could have easily given this 8+ stars based on production alone. So is it so difficult for them to let us know ahead of time that this is the first of 2 or 3 parts? Just as one is really getting interested BAM! Fade to black, no warning. Someone should have shamed the director and publishing company into being more up-front with their plans. For their lack of sympathy for the audience... 6 stars and no more. Take that, film-killing ruffians!

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