{"id":44964,"date":"2026-06-02T22:21:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T03:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=44964"},"modified":"2026-07-03T16:10:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T21:10:30","slug":"belated-movie-reviews-947","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2026\/06\/02\/belated-movie-reviews-947\/","title":{"rendered":"Belated Movie Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

“No, thank you. Gold leaf gets stuck between my teeth.”<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

The Ash Lad: In the Hall of the Mountain King<\/strong><\/em> (Norwegian; 2017) is a story, naively presented, in the Win a Princess!<\/em> genre of stories. Princess Kristin has not married by her 18th birthday, finding all aspirants unsatisfactory, and Prince Frederik rather repellent. She automatically now becomes the fiancee of the Mountain King, or would be if she stays home. She, however, flees the castle and her supine father.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Aspen has been left to take care of the simple family home, in the midst of the forest, by father and brothers, the latter pair named Per and P\u00e5l. Aspen loses the house through his characteristic carelessness. Facing disaster, Aspen, Per, and P\u00e5l are dispatched to find Princess Kristin and kill the Mountain King, thereby making their fortunes and saving the farm.<\/p>\n

Adventures ensue.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, and this problem is endemic with fairy tales, all the characters are one dimensional, existing to thrust their stereotype into the story and not have any independent thoughts. In good stories, characters have depth revealed over time, ideally that explain mysterious early characteristics or plot points.<\/p>\n

Not here.<\/p>\n

The special effects are fun, and while the story may be a bit stilted, the characters carry it through. But questions remain: Why would the Mountain King marry a woman apparently unable to bear a baby of his? Why doesn’t the Mountain King speak? Who thrust this curse upon the royal family, anyways?<\/p>\n

Isn’t being covered in moss itchy<\/em>?<\/p>\n

So, yeah, this is a bit squirmy, if an interesting glimpse of Norwegian fairy tales. It’s probably not worth your time unless the reader has a special interest in actor or genre, because it almost feels like a student-made movie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ash Lad: In the Hall of the Mountain King (Norwegian; 2017) is a story, naively presented, in the Win a Princess! genre of stories. Princess Kristin has not married by her 18th birthday, finding all aspirants unsatisfactory, and Prince Frederik rather repellent. She automatically now becomes the fiancee of \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44964"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45087,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44964\/revisions\/45087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}