On occasion I'll come across a film that I partly remember at some point throughout my childhood but sadly couldn't find it again so that I could get a more genuine look at it. This film is probably one of my oldest examples. I watched this movie at a very young age at someone's house (I think it was one my aunt and uncle's but it could've been someone else entirely) and I vividly remember parts of the beginning and end and tiny little pieces of it in between. So I wanted to see it again but I had no idea what it really was or what it was even called. Luckily, I discovered that Doug Walker has a review for it as the Nostalgia Critic, which helped me find it thanks to seeing familiar pieces of it and now knowing it's name. So now that I've finally seen it again, here at long last is my review for Once Upon A Forest.
Plot: In a forest called Dapplewood, four little animal children are learning lessons from their teacher who is a badger named Cornelius. But when a tanker truck crashes and starts leaking poisonous gas, plants and animals begin to die. The children and Cornelius try to find their parents when the youngest child, Cornelius' niece named Michelle, tries to find her parents and becomes poisoned in the process. So Cornelius sends the other three children to go out and find another meadow where they can find the herbs he needs to save her life.
Yeah, as you can guess from both my rating and the fact that I found it as a Nostalgia Critic review, this movie didn't turn out so swell as I would've liked it to. The story was kind of all over the place and the journey the three children went through didn't really feel all that big or suspenseful. Part of that comes from how they didn't really make anything that was happening really thrilling at all. they were facing things like an owl trying to eat them, almost accidentally get killed by construction, could've fallen off their flying machine trying to get one of the herbs and while I can kind of see why some people would, neither of these dangers they face felt like they could be seen as dramatically dangerous. Plus it adds a lot of things that aren't really needed and don't really fit into what is happening in the main story. One example is how one of the three children, a mouse named Abigail, bumps into this other mouse named Willy and they seem to become love interests. They were only in about two scenes together and both moments where very brief and weren't all that interesting, so there was no point. But the biggest example was probably the worst part of the movie were they came across these religious birds that were holding a funeral for a little bird who is stuck in...either quicksand and is going to sink to it, or just mud and he's going to starve to death...it's not clear which is it. Now firstly, the fact that it's not clear how the bird was supposedly going to die is another example of how they failed to make the dangers of the world suspenseful. Secondly the whole thing about the birds acting so religious...just no. And finally, the little bird kind of accepting his death was disturbing to see. Just the way he straight up said good-bye to his mom was kind of creepy. I'm glad I pretty much forgot this scene when I was a kid, because I honestly feel like I could've gotten nightmares from that. The characters are for the most part pretty bland and the songs where nothing memorable. I will give the movie credit that as dumb as it was that it had an environmental theme to it, they showed that not all human are bad unlike other films like this, but it wasn't necessarily done well.
And that's my review for Once Upon A Forest. While not every single thing about it is horrible, it is very weak with its story partially being all over the place and adding things that weren't really needed and didn't deliver any of its important elements well. If you haven't seen this movie, I wouldn't really bother. I may be glad that I saw it again just to extinguish my curiosity, but what I found was nothing all that good.
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