| The Adventures of Lolo the Penguin (Scamper the Penguin is the American version) | |
| Director: | Kenjirō Yoshida Gennady Sokolsky |
| Producer: | Toru Komori Takeo Nishiguchi |
| Starring: | Svetlana Stepchenko Lyudmila Gnilova Rolan Bykov Elena Sanaeva |
| Narrator: | Aleksey Batalov |
| Music: | Masahito Maruyama |
| Cinematography: | Alexander Chekhovsky |
| Studio: | Life Work Corp Soyuzmultfilm Sovinfilm Aist Corporation Jim Terry Productions (US version, "Scamper") Enoki Films USA |
| Runtime: | 78 minutes |
| Country: | Japan Soviet Union |
| Language: | Russian Japanese English |
The Adventures of Lolo the Penguin (Renamed “The Adventures of Scamper the Penguin” in The United States) is a 1986 animated coming-of-age adventure film, originally released as a three-part serial film. Its story focuses on a penguin named Lolo and his friend Pépé, he also becomes friends with Mak in the last part
The story begins with the end of winter, and the southern ocean showing the aurora australis. A raft of Adélie penguins, coming from the north, returns home. The females separate from their mates to go hunt as males build their nests from piles of pebbles. The females return to lay their eggs, only to eventually separate from the males again to find food, whilst the males take care of the eggs.
Eventually, most of the males give in to their hunger and leave to find some food as well. A flock of aggressive skuas constantly threatens to steal the penguin eggs and raids the nesting grounds while most of the flock is gone. Being the only one that stayed, a penguin named Toto saves the egg of another family, meanwhile one of their two eggs is stolen from their nest. When his mate, Lala, returns Toto admits that one of the eggs is not theirs. They return it to the rightful parents and have one egg for themselves.
When the eggs finally hatch, Toto and Lala receive a newborn penguin baby whom they name Lolo. He, like any other young penguin, is over-inquisitive and very curious, which can annoy some of the other penguins. Together with his best friend Pépé, Lolo goes on many journeys through the wild, learning about the creatures that live in region. He eventually also makes friends with a tame husky puppy called Don (though his name is Cowboy in the English version), who is on an Antarctic trek with his scientist master.
Eventually, however, Lolo and Pepe get separated from their home, and face many dangers such as attacks by leopard seals and killer whales. Eventually, they get captured by a large group of poachers, from whom they later escape with the help of a macaroni penguin named Mak and an old guard dog on board named Jack.
The young penguins return home, only to find that the poachers have also come to catch all the baby penguins to sell to a zoo; Despite some of the penguins getting killed in the operation, including Toto, Lolo leads a successful rescue and the poacher's ship is sunk when a chunk of ice falls off a nearby iceberg and causes a tidal wave.
The story ends with Don and the scientist flying home in a helicopter as the winter comes, Mak sets out alone to find his own family, and the other penguins go northward again, now led by Lolo.
| Character | Russian | Japanese | French | Dutch | US English |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Narrator | Aleksey Batalov | Unknown | Jean-Claude Sachot | Unknown | Mona Marshall |
| Lolo (Scamper) | Svetlana Stepchenko | Kazuko Sugiyama | Simon Koukissa | Cheryl Chase | |
| Pépé (Snowflake) | Lyudmila Gnilova | Sanae Miyuki[1] | Julia Ferrari | Kathy Ritter | |
| Grandfather Pigo (Mr. Feather) | Vyacheslav Nevinny | Unknown | Jan Rabson | ||
| Nini (Rosie) | Lyudmila Gnilova | Kathy Ritter | |||
| Toto (Gilbert, Lolo's father) | Rolan Bykov | Richard Rossner | |||
| Lala (Gracie, Lolo's mother) | Elena Sanaeva | Mona Marshall | |||
| Cowboy (Husky puppy who befriends Scamper and helps him get home) | Unknown | Unknown | |||
| Jack (Jack, the Saint Bernard dog) | Yevgeny Leonov | Jan Rabson | |||
| Mak (Louie, the nearly solid-black feathered Macaroni Penguin) | Natalya Chenchik | Mona Marshall | |||
| polar explorer (the scientist) | Nikolai Grabbe | Jan Rabson | |||
| poachers (the sailors) | Yuri Volyntsev, Vladimir Ferapontov, Vyacheslav Bogachev, Vladimir Soshalsky | Richard Rossner, Jan Rabson | |||
The original film was created by Takeo Nishiguchi who had sought a co-production with Soviet animation. He contacted them in 1980 and the film took several years to develop. During this time, the Soviet animation industry received film equipment commonly used in Japan. Although this wasn't the first time Russia and Japan collaborated to make an animated film, it was the first one to be primarily made in Russia.
The film was animated in 1986 by Soyuzmultfilm. It was co-produced by Soyuzmultflm and Japan's Lifework Corporation with music by Masahito Maruyama. It was sponsored by Aist Corporation and Sovinfilm. The Russian version premiered on Soviet television on June 25, 1987, whilst the Japanese version was released as an OVA in 1988.
Two English dubs of Lolo have been produced, the first of which being produced by Moscow-based Filmexport Studios, also known as Sovexportfilm, which was known to make English dubs of Soviet cinema, although it used to be assumed to have been produced in the United Kingdom. Even with the English dubbing, the music, names, and titles were not changed and stayed in their original form. This version also kept the serial in the form of separate parts.
Although keeping the same style and font as the credits of the Russian version, the credits of the original English version only credited much of the key figures by the first letter of their first name and their last name (i.e. E. Tati, V. Merezhko, G. Sokolsky, K. Yasaida), and according to the credits, the English credit translations were done by Nikolai Kurnakov, while the voice actors in this version were uncredited. The copyrights for the three part serial go from 1987 to 1989.
In 2005, Force Entertainment put out a Region 4 DVD release of the film in Australia, using the Filmexport dubbed version. However, this DVD is heavily edited from the original source, with 15 minutes of footage deleted, not only because of censorship, but also due to the unremastered copy used, as evidenced by various scenes in this version, such as the ending scene. The edits were also done extremely roughly and are quite noticeable too.
The second English dub of Lolo was done by Jim Terry Productions and localized by Enoki Films USA, it was released to VHS in 1990 by Celebrity Home Entertainment, and was later re-released by Feature Films for Families. Allumination Filmworks, under license from Feature Films for Families, put this version on DVD in 2005. This English dub was titled The Adventures of Scamper the Penguin, and, similar to the 2005 Force DVD of Filmexport's dub, had a number of edits done to make it more appropriate for American children, including but not limited to:
Among these edits were changing the names of almost all the characters. Lolo's name was changed to Scamper, Pepe's name was changed to Snowflake, Mak became Louie, Toto & Lala became Gilbert & Gracie, Grandfather Pigo became Mr. Feather, Nini became Rosie, and Don became Cowboy. Jack was the only character to keep his original name. The music score was also changed from the orchestral music used in the original version to a synthesized one done by Mark Mercury (credited as Bullets), and also added original songs that play over certain scenes, such as the seabird raid, Lolo and Pepe teaching Don how to slide, and the scene when Lolo, Pepe, and Mak return home.
In order for this version to stay at almost the same running time as the Lolo version, certain frames and cels from Scamper were reused in certain scenes, most notably in the scenes that use music. Amazon Prime Instant Video's print did not use the English version, but instead used the Russian dubbed version with optional English subtitles.[2]
Most dubs of the film were either sourced from the original film or the Scamper version of the movie. The latter is due to Enoki Films handling the localization rights to Scamper, resulting in most dubs being sourced from that version, however, there are a couple versions of the movie that are slightly more unique
There was previously a French-Canadian dub of the movie sourced from the US version, but there was also a dub done in France, which was given a theatrical release by Arkeion Films on April 13, 2005, 18 years after the Russian language version came out and two and a half months after the release of the French penguin documentary film March of the Penguins. The French is basically a carbon copy of the German dub of the film (Bauzi - Der Kleine Pinguin) with the music, names, and the violence in the climax restored from The Adventures of Lolo the Penguin. The French version also adds some new music done by Raphael Devillers, and possibly due to the German version being used as a source film, certain music pieces from Lolo are out of sync in the French dub.
The German dub titled Bauzi - Der Kleine Pinguin was sourced from the Scamper version, including the new theme song and credits as well as the new music. Both the theme song and the credits were translated into German. The opening credits are abridged instead of the credits, all the songs are higher pitched, and for some reason, Lolo is called a Humboldt Penguin, which doesn't live in Antarctica, the fact of him being an Adelie Penguin is actually acknowledged in the US version. However, several deleted scenes were restored:
The Dutch version is known as De Avonturen van Pim de Pinguïn (The Adventures of Pim the Penguin) and has elements of the Scamper version (use of a theme song) and the Russian version, but it contains a completely different theme, soundtrack, and sound effects, the latter especially being notable due to the dub's overabundance of goofy cartoony sound effects (which were not present in the Lolo version and were scarcely used in the Scamper version). This is also the only version of Lolo to have been given a widescreen release as well.