BEFORE: No more bug-based films, so I'm opening up the topic to include all manner of woodland and jungle creatures. Should keep me busy for the next two weeks. I've got February's movies blocked out on paper, but I can change things around a bit if need be.
This film is basically rodent-based, so maybe I should have watched it right after "Stuart Little 2". Oh, well, what's done is done. Linking from "A Bug's Life", David Hyde Pierce did a voice in the film "Hellboy", which starred Ron Perlman, who was also in "The Last Supper" with Elisabeth Moss, who voiced a character in this 1993 animated film (she was 11 at the time).
THE PLOT: A young mouse, mole and hedgehog risk their lives to find a cure for their badger friend, who's been poisoned by men.
AFTER: Hmm, as in last night's film, a plot point concerns animals impossibly building an airplane-like device. That's an odd coincidence. Why don't the goofs on the IMDB page ever say things like, "Three forest animals without opposable thumbs simply cannot construct a working flying machine." Or, for that matter, why don't they include the fact that forest animals can't talk, and don't wear cute clothing?
Three overly-cute and well-dressed animals have to go on a (say it with me, now) long and difficult quest to get the herbs needed to cure their friend, who inhaled some gas fumes after a tanker truck crashed. And the tanker truck crashed because it ran over a broken bottle, which was thrown out of a car window by a litterer. Yes, the humans are the villains here, no matter how you slice it, with their roads, and their tanker trucks and their construction equipment.
This is high eco-claptrap from the Hanna-Barbera studios - I'm sorry, I love animals, but I refuse to feel guilty over the Industrial Revolution. I didn't invent the combustion engine or coal-mining, or carbon monoxide. Should we all just stop driving our cars and shut down the generators and live in the woods like bushmen? Ain't gonna happen, you can't unring that bell.
However, looking at the films coming up on the schedule, it looks like I'll be seeing a lot more of this sort of eco-friendly evil-human thing in the days to come. Well, at least this film was short (71 minutes) and didn't take up too much of my time.
The high point in this film for me was the song "Please Wake Up", as sung by Michael Crawford, voicing an older badger. The symbolic references to morning and night made it feel like a lost song from "Phantom of the Opera", especially the way he sings it.
Also starring the voice of Ben Vereen (last seen in "All That Jazz").
RATING: 3 out of 10 acorns
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