Voices of Michael Crawford, Ellen Blain, Benji Gregory, and Paige Gosney
Directed by Charles Grosvenor
Music by James Horner; Lyrics by Will Jennings and others
Concern for the environment was so prevalent during the early 90's that it even seeped into animation. Having had mild success with Ferngully: The Last Rainforest the year before, Fox returned to the well with an even more emotional story about taking care of our earth. It wasn't a hit at the time, but is it worth checking out 30 years later? Let's begin with dawn at a lovely meadow called Dapplewood, as the animal residents are starting to awaken, and find out...
The Story: Cornelius the badger (Crawford) mentors four little "Furlings," Abigail the energetic mouse (Blain), Edgar the sweet and shy mole (Gregory), Russell the always-hungry hedgehog (Gosney), and his sweet little niece Michelle (Elizabeth Moss). One day, poison gas from a ruptured truck leaks into the forest. The children are with Cornelius and are unharmed, but Michelle loses her parents and inhales the gas. Cornelius sends Abigail, Edgar, and Russell to retrieve Lung-wort and Eye-bright, the only herbs that can save the little badger. The trio learn to work together to avoid a barn owl, cross a construction site, help a wren (Rickey D'Shon Collins) get unstuck from the mud, and retrieve the lung-wort from a cliff, and discover their own hidden talents in the process.
The Animation: Extremely Disney-esque and very typical of this time period and of Hanna-Barbara. The woods are beautiful, with their sun-dappled forests and blooming plants...but then you get the ultra-realistic construction site and the devastation wrought by the poison gas. The animals look like a cross between The Secret of Nimh and some of the cutesier Hanna-Barbara TV shows of the 1980s like The Biskitts or Shirt Tales. They're designed to be adorable, especially little Michelle, but they can get some darker expressions out of them - check out when they realize Michelle is sick.
The Song and Dance: I do give Hanna Barbera some kudos for daring to go this dark. Even Ferngully: The Last Rainforest didn't kill off characters or completely destroy the forest. This is darker than some Disney movies of the 90's. Crawford makes an appropriately gruff mentor, and Ben Vereen does get into his big number with the birds and the Furlings after they rescue the wren from the mud.
The Numbers: Our first number isn't until 15 minutes in, but it's the devastating "Please Wake Up," sung by Cornelius to the comatose Michelle after she's gassed. Even Crawford had a hard time performing this emotional ballad of love and loss. "He's Gone" is the birds' number when they think they're losing the wren to the mud. They change this to the joyous "He's Back" after the kids get him out. Florence Warner Jones performs the gentle "Once Upon a Time With Me" over the closing credits.
Trivia: This would be the last Hanna-Barbera movie released to theaters.
What I Don't Like: See that "dark" thing above. Um, what audience did Hanna-Barbera intend this for again? The cutesy kid animal characters and bucolic setting indicate a children's movie, but the poison gas, construction site, and bird stuck in the mud mourned by his family at a funeral are more likely to give them nightmares, or at least upset them quite a bit. No wonder it was a massive flop in 1993. Some audiences today might not know what to make of this, let alone then. The sequence with the birds and the wren is totally out of left field and feels like it was dropped in from another movie entirely to give Vereen something to do.
The Big Finale: That said, there are quite a few people who saw this on video in the 90's and found it profoundly moving. Frankly, while it can be moving, the clash of tones and utterly depressing plot was a bit too much for me. Your mileage may vary on whether your elementary school kids are up to this one; might actually be better for tweens if you can get them past the cute animals.
Home Media: Easily found on DVD and streaming.
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