It's weird going back to a movie like this. I watched it so much as a kid that I had all the lines memorized, and then I didn't see it for 20 years. I found myself knowing exactly what they were going to say next even though I felt like I couldn't remember any actual scenes or dialog.
Thankfully not as preachy as I expected, but it's notable in that we barely see the villain actually do anything and he isn't in the movie tons. The stakes aren't super clear a lot of the time, there's just this nebulous threat that he's eventually coming to FernGully and vague hand waving about "hurting the forest." As an adult I get that, but the movie never really does a good job at showing or telling us how this is happening. It's kind of a lot of "it's bad because we say it's bad."
I'm also genuinely surprised by the character designs? For a kids movie, there's a LOT of skin. It's cartoon skin, but there's also a few weirdly intimate moments in this movie that definitely gave this mid-90's kid some feelings he didn't understand at the time.
Animation is okay. They're clearly shooting for Disney quality on a budget. It looks pretty good a lot of the time, and they're big on doing rotoscoped CGI for a few complex scenes. The main failing is lip sync; animators just gave up animating mouths for some shots, or there was clearly adlib/ADR and the mouth movements were never updated to reflect the altered lines of dialog. Still, when it looks good, it looks really good. Just not quite Disney good (for reference, this movie was up against Beauty & The Beast and Aladdin).
Overall, not the worst kids movie you could watch, even in 2022. Just a little bland and slightly horny.
Thankfully not as preachy as I expected, but it's notable in that we barely see the villain actually do anything and he isn't in the movie tons. The stakes aren't super clear a lot of the time, there's just this nebulous threat that he's eventually coming to FernGully and vague hand waving about "hurting the forest." As an adult I get that, but the movie never really does a good job at showing or telling us how this is happening. It's kind of a lot of "it's bad because we say it's bad."
I'm also genuinely surprised by the character designs? For a kids movie, there's a LOT of skin. It's cartoon skin, but there's also a few weirdly intimate moments in this movie that definitely gave this mid-90's kid some feelings he didn't understand at the time.
Animation is okay. They're clearly shooting for Disney quality on a budget. It looks pretty good a lot of the time, and they're big on doing rotoscoped CGI for a few complex scenes. The main failing is lip sync; animators just gave up animating mouths for some shots, or there was clearly adlib/ADR and the mouth movements were never updated to reflect the altered lines of dialog. Still, when it looks good, it looks really good. Just not quite Disney good (for reference, this movie was up against Beauty & The Beast and Aladdin).
Overall, not the worst kids movie you could watch, even in 2022. Just a little bland and slightly horny.