FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992)

IMDb plot summary: The magical inhabitants of a rainforest fight to save their home, which is threatened by logging and a polluting force of destruction called Hexxus.

Directed by Bill Kroyer. Stars Samantha Mathis, Christian Slater, and Robin Williams.

FernGully is an animated film from 1992 about a magical area of the rainforest where the fairies have trapped the evil demon of pollution inside a tree, but when American landscapers come and start cutting down the trees, the demon is released. Our main protagonists are the princess of the fairies, who is naive about the impact of humans on her world, and a human worker who is accidentally shrunk down to fairy size and learns about the harm that he's doing. This is truly a strange movie, primarily because it has extremely trendy '90s musical styles right alongside a didactic environmentalism message, and the two mix in a really bizarre way. The most evident moment of this is when Robin Williams' character, a bat who was escaped from a laboratory that does animal testing, delivers a 90 style rap about all the horrible torture he's been put through. It's such a bizarre attempt to entertain while also delivering devastating information that it mostly leaves me confused more than anything. That's the case throughout most of this film. The musical choices are the most exciting thing about it while also being by far the weirdest. The rest of the movie is fine. It delivers a children's message about deforestation in a pretty straightforward way. Our lead characters are by no means charismatic, so that's a little disappointing, but it's clearly a message movie more than anything else, and while it makes strange choices about how to get that message out, I think it's fairly successful in conveying what it's trying to convey. But... yeah. This is a weird movie.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992)

📊 Ranked #2126/4018 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 48

lost to Swing Time (#2006 → #1973)

beat Blue Is the Warmest Color (#3007 → #3002)

beat Gilda (#2502 → #3063)

beat National Theatre Live: The Habit of Art (#2257 → #2186)

lost to Pat and Mike (#2130 → #1972)

beat After the Wedding (#2197 → #2277)

lost to The Act of Killing (#2161 → #1806)

lost to Beauty and the Beast (#2179 → #2098)

beat X (#2182 → #2286)

lost to The Year of Living Dangerously (held at #2177)

lost to Absolute Power (#2185 → #2125)

lost to Jackie (#2181 → #1801)