Plot: Crysta is a fairy who lives in a rainforest called Ferngully where other fairies and animals live together. Magi, the fairy who is teaching Crystal how to use her magic, tells her the story of how humans and fairies lived together until a spirit named Hexxus drove the humans away before Magi imprisoned him. And ever since then, Crysta has had a curiosity to actually meet humans someday. She comes across a bat named Batty who tells her about how he and other animals have been experimented on by humans. But she doesn't believe him until she encounters lumberjacks cutting down trees. One of them named Zak is almost killed by a falling tree until Crysta shrinks him and saves him from getting chopped up. As she begins to befriend him however, the other lumberjacks cut down the tree that Hexxus was imprisoned in, giving him the chance to use their cutting machine to destroy Ferngully.
As likely many of you know, this movie is so direct in its message about the environment that it's really annoying. And that has become so commonly known that when people talk about the story lines from films that Avatar is similar to, Ferngully is probably the number one film that people think of the most - either that or Dances With Wolves or Pocahontas. All of which are comparisons that I myself am guilty of making when I wrote my own review for that movie far back when I barely started writing reviews. But as a kid, I never really got the feel that it was preachy at all. I mean granted, I was only a kid and I only saw it a couple of times growing up. But back then, I liked the film, mainly because of its fantasy elements, the fact that Robin Williams was voicing one of the characters. And watching it grown up, I stick by...some parts of those two elements.
Watching this movie grown up, I didn't find all the magical stuff with the fairies to be all that interesting, especially with how aware I am of its annoying environmental message. There are some little parts that are still a little interesting in their own way I guess, but it's just not the same. In fact, there is at least one moment where something magical happens that I thought was cool and deep, but as an adult I realize it doesn't make sense. In this said scene, the fairies are getting ready for when Hexxus comes, and somehow part of what they are doing involves one of them dying. It seems like the character is sacrificing herself for the magic to work or something, but given what happens step by step, there's no clear explanation as to how or why. But the fantasy element that does hold out the most was Hexxus. They gave gave him pretty cool designs as he goes from being a blob of sludge, to a giant polluted cloud, to a giant skeleton that I think is a made of a mixture of sludge and...just magic. Though as cool as most of the design for when he's a cloud is, even as a kid I thought we was less intimidating in that form. His other two forms are more genuinely menacing to me because you have a blob with a mouth and no eyes in one form and in the other, he's a giant skeleton. And while his cloud form is a good design in the long run, there's just something about his face and voice that just kills it for me.
Now with Robin Williams as Batty, I am in a bit of a mix. On the one hand, he still is fun to watch...though maybe just for the sake of the fact that it's Robin Williams, especially given his death last year. And I admit that even thought I'm older, I still kind of like his "Batty Rap" early on in the film. As for the character himself, he was a little all over the place. I think the best way I could put it is that Batty is sort of a prologue for Williams' performance as The Genie (especially given that this movie came out a few months before Aladdin), but with a performance with his usual voices and jokes that only half work - or even make sense. But either way, he was the most entertaining about the protagonists, as there isn't much that completely stands out about Zach or Crysta...except how completely revealing Crysta's outfit. I mean I agree with the Nostalgia Chick when she described Crysta has "Tinkerbell's slutty sister," but watching the movie again, I couldn't help but be a little critical of how there are so many moments where that thing should not have covered as much as it did.
One really pretentious yet odd factor in the film is the music. It's honestly up to you if they are considered good or not, but whether it's through the whole track or just parts of it, these songs are either forcing in their environmental message or...singing about how sexual the thing they are talking about is. Like there's this iguana who sings about eating Zach as if the entire process of doing so turns him on. Then you have a song about the magic of the rainforest, which is self explanatory. And finally Hexxus' song that has both; the main chorus is about his 'toxic love' and in the middle of the song, he talks about his main goal and adds that humans and their greed are a large help to his plan.
And that's my review for Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. I think a part of me will always like how much I enjoyed the film as a kid, but now that I'm grown up, I see it as the over kill of an environmental message it is, with its disturbing adult content and not that interesting of a main character. Unless you want to see it just for the sake that you have seen this kind of film, I would skip it.
Rating: 35%
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