Allumination Filmworks has released The Ugly Duckling and Me: School Days, a collection of three episodes from the Danish-produced CGI television cartoon, Ugly Duckling Junior (which is actually a spin-off of the Danish 2005 feature film The Ugly Duckling and Me). I never saw the feature film from which the series was spun off, but I'll be looking for it now, because I had quite a good time watching this ironic little slice of life in the duckyard.

Evidently, the feature film explains how Ugly, the little duckling who's the star of the show, came to call Ratso, the series' comic relief, his father, but we can only guess here. Living in a tumultuous, hectic, stressful duckyard, Ugly navigates the pressures and tribulations of growing up in a society that distinctly disregards his own discomfort. In other words, The Ugly Duckling and Me: School Days is a mirror on our own contemporary life. Even though Ugly's adventures are structured at a kid's level (problems with bullies, problems going to school), the average viewer won't have any trouble recognizing the same pressures and downturns (as well as the occasional triumphs) in their own life, that happen to poor little Ugly.

I'm sure most viewers will immediately see a resemblance to Shrek here, with the ugly little hero and his wise-cracking sidekick reminding us of the Dreamworks smash, but The Ugly Duckling and Me: School Days has a quirky little kick all of its own. From the jazzy score, to the funny CGI animation (Ugly is adorably ugly, with a marvelous range of expression for an obviously limited production budget), to the sometimes genuinely weird moments that frequently pop up, The Ugly Duckling and Me: School Days starts out with zero expectations on the viewer's part, and quickly finds its own niche. You keep assuming it's just a cheap CGI knockoff for kiddies, but funny little touches appear again and again. One of the plot threads throughout the series is a trio of mean little chicks who initially bully Ugly on his first day of school. In what I assume are commercial bumpers, various characters, set against a black screen, engage in a quick shtick before the story resumes. And one of these bumpers has the chick trio, chortling demonically as the camera pans over them in extreme close-up. I can't really explain why that struck me as so funny (probably because it's such a gleeful little representation of mean-spiritedness and potential violence), but it had me playing an A-B loop on it for about three minutes.

Here are the 3, 25-minute episodes of The Ugly Duckling and Me: School Days, as described on the DVD hardcase:

Ugly's First Day at School
Ugly is excited about attending school, but when he gets bullied by three mean chicks on his first day, he decides he won't go anymore! Ratso needs to convince Ugly to go back and he has just the perfect recipe: if you don't want to be bullied, be a bully yourself!

Educating Ratso
Ratso has never had an education and he does just fine, so he urges Ugly to skip school. When Mayor Esmeralda finds out, she is not pleased. Now Ratso has to go to school, too, and get his Chicken certificate or else he will be expulsed from the yard!

What Would Ratso Do?
"Like Hen, like Chick." When Ugly's schoolteacher Daphne explains the meaning of this expression to the class, he gets very confused. Ugly has no intention of becoming exactly like his dad, so he sets out to do the exact opposite of what Ratso would do.

The DVD:

The Video:
The full screen video image for The Ugly Duckling and Me: School Days is fine, with clear, sharp detail, although occasional artifacting does crop up. It's negligible, though.

The Audio:
The English mono soundtrack is adequate for the job, with all dialogue clearly heard.

The Extras:
Unfortunately, there are no extras for The Ugly Duckling and Me: School Days.

Final Thoughts:
I had never heard of this Danish TV series before, and frankly, I wasn't expecting much from it, but I was more than pleasantly surprised by the quirky, ironic stories of the duckyard presented here. Ugly and Ratso are charismatic little performers, while the sometimes familiar material is often given a lift by neat little weird twists in the scripting and direction. I recommend The Ugly Duckling and Me: School Days.