FernGully: What?

I saw FernGully: The Last Rainforest at least once as a child. I remembered one scene: a young man listening to a Walkman and marking trees to be cut down. Other than that, nothing. That memory suppression may have saved my life, because rewatching this movie proved that it is awful.

What follows are my scattered thoughts about this mess of a movie:

1. The worst part is the whole concept:

• There are fairies who tell Native American-like stories about the human race (the beginning of this movie had to be inspiration for M. Night's Lady in the Water prologue). The two races used to be close and live in the rainforest together, but have since lost contact.
• The faries' archenemy is some sort of spirit named Hexxus that wants to destroy FernGully.
• The humans are destroying the trees.
• Hexxus uses the humans to destroy FernGully with one very powerful tree-cutting machine.
• The overarching theme is "Take care of the earth", but because of the fantasy elements, add on "...because it will hurt the fairies." What are we trying to save?
  
• The real enemy seems to be Hexxus since the humans are too dumb to know that they will destroy the fairies. The villain is absolutely convoluted. People aren't the enemy in this movie even though that seems to be what the creators are trying to convey: humans need to stop cutting down trees and destroying the environment.
  
• Thus, humans should watch out for deceiving spirits that will give false orders to destroy rainforests because cute fairies will lose their homes.
  

2. The blatant propaganda is incredible. Every time the rainforest is shown, it's sparkling with lush color and wildlife. Every time a clearcut area is shown, the colors are dampened and ugly browns and reds. The "tree-eater" is shown in distorted angles with a red, fiery "mouth". Trees = good. Tree-eaters = bad. Fascism did teach us that you've got to get to the kids early.

3. I hate every good character in this movie. Crysta is the dumbest heroine ever. She has huge eyes and the body of a pin-up girl, but overall, she has no personality. I think she's supposed to be spunky, except she's scared of everything and terrible with her fairy powers. Zac, the human who gets turned fairy-sized by dumb Crysta, is a horny 18-year-old. Somehow he has a "change-of-heart" about cutting down trees, except he was only working for tree-cutters as a summer job, so...big change. Why am I supposed to care?

Robin Williams plays Batty. I guess they wanted comic relief to distract people from how terrible the plot is, except it's more painful than funny. There's rapping involved:



Apparently Robin Williams was in high demand for humorous sidekick characters in 1992.

5. The one redeeming character is Hexxus because it's played by Tim Curry--aka Best.Villian.Ever.

Hexxus is the manifestation of everything evil and knows that humans are easily manipulated to so anything for money (remember, humans are dumb). "Toxic Love" is the best song in the movie, not only for Mr. Curry, but also the ridiculous lyrics:



6. Basically, this movie makes no sense, is badly constructed propaganda that is way too long, even at 72 minutes. It lacks the streamlined Disney touch. Note to future filmmakers: never combine fairies, evil spirits, Native American storytelling, and environmentalism together. It will never work.