Ferngully is the story of fairy Crysta, living in the unspoiled Australian rain forest full of fairies, including Crysta and Pips. Crysta sneaks out of the canopy and spots smoke on the horizon. Smoke created by humans, of course. She goes to investigate it, sees a monster tearing down trees and is captured by a human she got to close to. She uses her fairy magic to accidentally shrink him down and there's a real nice Tarzan vibe there as he learns about the forest from her. It's a nice story and could have been left there - the danger of humans clear cutting rain forests.
But then they throw in an evil spirit named Hexxus, voiced rather seductively by the excellent Tim Curry, who is freed by the monster, in reality a tree-cutting machine and subsequently takes it over to destroy Ferngully. I'm not even sure why he's there because the humans were heading towards Ferngully anyway, but I guess the movie needed a villain it could kill off. At least his final scene was awesome as hell. Why couldn't he look like that through the entire movie and not the black fart that he usually was?
Ferngully takes a lot of cues from Don Buth's classic, Secret of N.I.H.M. and most of them are seen in Batty, a fruit bat that escapes a lab and winds up in Ferngully, where he meets Crysta. Batty talks - no sings - about the evils of humanity. So you've basically got Secret's animal testing message and Dom Deluise's irritating Jeffery thrown into one character. Scientists implanted electrodes into Batty's head, which frequently shock him. It's a device which allows for Williams's trademark frantic voice changes, which could have been awesome (as they were in Aladdin, which was released the same year as this, but it's so downplayed here that you'd barely notice. It is only played up in a scene at the end where other main character, Zac, purposefully changes "the channel" to get a result he likes.

Ferngully on its surface looks like a decent lesson in environmental protection. It's got cute, quirky characters and a scary looking villain. But looking closer at it, it almost blatantly steals its look after the 2nd biggest animation studio of the time, directed by a guy whose biggest credit before this is story director of Challenge of the Go-Bots. I wonder how he was able to get Robin Williams to sign on in the first place.

Sorry Brian that you had another crap movie in joining one of my blogathons. Thanks for joining with this and if Michael Caine has done anything worth watching in animation love you to join my Michael Caine one.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I wouldn't call it crappy. It wasn't magnificent, but was far from Transformers: The Last Knight shittiness. Glad to be a part of your blogathon!
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