Review of FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992) by Lara D — 03 Jun 2017

I loved Ferngully as a kid, but the movie was hard to come-by. It wasn't a Disney or Pixar film, so it kind of faded (and the awful sequel didn't help.) So, for my first movie on this journey, I though I would revisit an old favorite.

Characters:

This was a movie that was made by the side characters. Batty is the best by far (thank you Robin Williams RIP), he's the one with most personality, the most inflection in his mannerisms, and the deepest backstory. Pips, despite his lack of significant backstory is at least interesting to watch. He's more level headed than the rest and had some hilarious facial expressions. And then you have the two leads Crystal and Zack. These two are where the movie falls flat. They don't have much personality other than the latter being naive and a bit inept, while the former's main personality traits are human and an excessive representation of 90s youth culture.The villain is another stand out, despite not getting a huge amount of screen time; and while he has the evil trait, he's not a fleshed out as I would have liked, what makes the character is Tim Curry's voice acting.

Voice acting:

Which brings us to our next topic. Batty and Hexxus were incredibly well voiced and largely make the up the appeal of the movie for me. Pips voice actor (which I believe is Christian Slater), did a pretty good job, given his limited lines. Zack was more unremarkable. Although,there was notable difficulties around this one scene where Zack was teaching Crystal slang, but I would chalk that up to more of a poorly written scene than the actor's abilities. And Finally Crystal, she seemed to just have roughly the same inflection in her voice the entire movie. It was really hard to get any real emotional read from the character, barring one or two scenes, because her tone didn't really change throughout. Maybe the voice actress was skilled, but up against Tim Curry and Robin Williams, she was a poor choice.

Animation:

The animation was pretty good overall. The shift between the idyllic Ferngully and the destroyed forest was well done and definitely had a sense of doom. It did suffer from a 90s style animation. I don't really know how to describe that other than it was basically what you expected to see on Saturday morning cartoons in the 90s. I found it charming, but the movie didn't age quite as well because of it.

Story:

The meat of the story is a big environmentalist narrative (which I like). Hexxus was trapped, humans (while destroying the rain forest) set him free, through shenanigans a human ends up tiny and in Ferngully, human learns the beauty of nature and the severity of what humans have done, fairies defeat Hexxus through the power of nature. Now, I didn't mind this narrative, most of the movie is handled well and conveys this message without detracting from the storytelling aspect of the film. However, the whole romance between Crystal and Zack is so ham-handed that the middle third of the movie is just bad. The romance has a touch of a love triangle to it, which is never fully explored. Also, there is no real chemistry between the characters, at least to me. Disney has the love at first sight thing perfected, so maybe I'm spoiled and just can't appreciate what was done. The whole middle third just didn't work for me.

Music:

The music was mostly average. Not good, but not spectacular. The two stand-outs were, of course, Batty's Rap and Toxic Love (the villain song). Both well done, catchy, and in the case of Toxic Love, with a weirdly sensual edge to it. Regardless of whether you watch the movie, I would highly recommend giving those songs a listen.

Conclusion:

I like the environmentalist message and the story was nice enough. However, I don't see myself watching this movie again. I'd rather watch compilations of Batty and Hexxus. If you've never seen the movie, I think it's worth a try, but if you watched it when you were younger, a Batty compilation will probably highlight the best moments for you.