Story
Swifty (voice of Jeremy Renner) is a young white arctic fox, who feels he’s invisible because his colour blends so well into the environment. He admires the top dogs in his small town of Taigasville. These dogs work for the ABDS (Arctic Blast Delivery Service) and deliver important packages to town residents. Even though he’s a fox, Swifty dreams of becoming a top dog one day and works hard to follow his heroes, particularly Duke (Mike Medson).
When Swifty grows up, he gets a job processing parcels at the ABDS. Swifty’s friend Jade (Heidi Klum) has returned to Taugasville after completing an engineering degree. She asks Swifty to deliver some important parcels to Otto Von Walrus (John Cleese). Swifty is dismayed when Otto turns out to be an aggressive, nasty walrus who walks on robotic legs.
Swifty’s curiosity is aroused and he returns to Otto Von Walrus’ cave to find out what Otto is doing behind the iron doors of his house. In fact, Otto is building a huge drill to destroy the polar caps of the Arctic shelf and bring on climate change. Swifty and his friends have a hard job ahead of them to prevent Otto carrying out his menacing plans. Swifty also realises he can use his invisibility to his advantage.
Themes
Animals in peril; climate change
Violence
Arctic Justice has some violence. For example:
- Characters fall down, run into each other, accidentally knock each other over, get covered in snow and so on. These scenes are mostly presented for laughs.
- Otto Von Walrus has an army of small puffins, which are quite violent. They knock the top dogs out with a pink gaseous substance and abduct them.
- Otto Von Walrus is often cruel to the puffins and punches them together like balls. The puffins also get hurt in an explosion.
- One of the spies punches Swifty in the face as an initiation ceremony.
- The puffins attack Swifty and his friends with rifles that fire snowballs. Swifty’s vehicle gets hit and overturns. The puffins imprison Swifty and his friends.
- Otto Von Walrus grabs Jade with a mechanical claw.
- The puffins shoot at Swifty and friends with their snowball rifles. One creature gets repeatedly hit. Magda pulls out a rifle but it doesn’t work for long.
- Swifty gets hit in his private parts by a snowball and doubles over in pain.
- Otto Von Walrus and Swifty fight. Otto crushes Swifty with an iron bar. The drill suddenly explodes and Otto and Swifty go flying.
Sexual references
Arctic Justice has some sexual references. For example:
- Magda the Moose asks whether it’s fair that her husband ran off with someone 10 years younger.
- Swifty and Jade like each other. They kiss and hug occasionally.
Alcohol, drugs and other substances
Arctic Justice shows some use of substances. For example:
- Gas is used twice to knock out characters.
- Swifty suffers a hangover after a celebration party.
Nudity and sexual activity
Arctic Justice has some nudity and sexual activity. For example, to become invisible Swifty takes off his clothes, apart from his white underpants.
Product placement
None noted.
Coarse language
Arctic Justice has some coarse language, including ‘arse’, ‘screw up’ and ‘for Pete’s sake’.
Ideas to discuss with your children
Arctic Justice is an animated comedy drama for children.
It has a lot of slapstick violence and other menacing threats, which could scare young children. Therefore, it isn’t suitable for children under 5 years, and we recommend parental guidance for children aged 5-6 years.
Although the movie has the more mature theme of climate change, it doesn’t really explain it and it might lack interest for older children.
The main messages from this movie are that good triumphs over evil and that we all have our own unique talents.
Values in this movie that you could reinforce with your children include self-worth, friendship and teamwork.
This movie could also give you the chance to talk with your children about real-life questions like:
- why it’s important just to be ourselves and not conform to popular ideals
- why Otto Von Walrus or anyone would want to destroy the Arctic
- why it’s important to look after the environment.