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Some things are better left in our past. Bath and Body Works blue raspberry scented roll-on glitter. Butterfly clips with springs. The milky white SoBe drink. Sometimes how we remember something is better than it actually is. And today that something is the beloved 90’s animated movie Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (1992, 75 minutes). 

This newsletter goes out to Mike who casually suggested Ferngully to me via DM. Even though this one was painful - I am still taking suggestions. Send a DM, leave a comment, write me a letter. And don’t forget to:

I have loved Ferngully for as long as I can remember. We owned it on VHS when I was a kid and I rewatched it many times. It left a lasting imprint on me and most of the millennials I know. Ferngully was visceral, it was magical, it made us care about trees, and made us day dream about fairies. It was special. Rewatching it was… less so. So I need to revise my earlier statement: I have loved the CONCEPT of Ferngully for as long as I can remember. Not the actual movie itself. 

A passion project created by a husband and wife, Ferngully takes us to a magical land deep in Australia’s rainforest where fairies live in harmony with nature and humans are just a myth. There lives Crysta (Samantha Mathis), a young fairy learning the ways of magic from a much older fairy named Magi (Grace Zabriskie). Crysta is stubbornly curious and knows there is more outside of Ferngully even though Magi is very withholding. One day, with the help of Batty (Robin Williams), a bat who has escaped from a cosmetic test site, Crysta branches out and finds humans-- and the danger they bring with them. She accidentally shrinks down one of the humans, Zak (Jonathan Ward), and over time teaches him the importance of the rainforest. After an ancient evil named Hexxus (Tim Curry) is released, it is up to Crysta, Zak, and Batty to save the day. 

Disclaimer: Animated movies have become more sophisticated over time and knowing this, I am going to try and be as fair as possible in my assessment of sweet Ferngully. 

While technically Ferngully has a plot, it's weak, disconnected, and at times very hard to follow. It’s clear that the creators were not aiming for a sophisticated audience. Something that golden age Disney movies got right early on and something Pixar would go on to perfect, is the ability to tell stories and write scripts that appeal to both adults and children. These movies straddle both worlds with in-jokes for adults and sillier (likely animal-based) humor for kids. (I won’t get into the emotional aspects of these movies because I am still deeply wounded by the opening of Up.) The scripts are finely tuned to appeal to all ages and groups. Ferngully, on the other hand, is strictly a kids movie. The only nods to adult viewers are via the casting (Robin Williams, Tone Loc, Tim Curry, Christian Slater) and not much else. 

In fact our lead, Crysta, is infuriatingly naive and immature. She is childlike in the worst ways possible and is shielded by the adults in her circle from the knowledge she needs to survive and one day care for Ferngully… which it appears she is being groomed for at the beginning of the movie. But this, like a lot of the actual plot, is vague. Who needs segues when you’re making a movie for a bunch of kids? Beats appear out of nowhere with very little connective tissue. Batty arrives, and without any real character shifts or arguments, Crysta takes off with him to check out some smoke in the sky. Later, just as suddenly, Magi decides she’s done with Ferngully and her leadership position and just disappears. She explodes into a blue light with no explanation. There is no lore or background as to why or how she disappears. As far as the plot is concerned, Magi’s departure is just something that should be happening so Crysta can grow. For a kid, I guess the beats “make sense” because they have a general understanding of how a movie should go: This is when the hero leaves, this is when the hero returns, this is when the hero must overcome their fears. But to an adult viewer, it’s jarring.

The same can be said for the musical numbers. Ferngully really doesn’t need music. But because the movie is checking off boxes and moving through beats, we gotta have original songs! I remembered only the Batty song because apparently hearing Robin Williams rap a mediocre character origin story was so impressive/scary/wrong/brilliant that it stayed with me for 30 years. I have mixed emotions about this but since I am being primarily negative here I guess we can let Batty/Robin have this one. It is the best song in the movie (for what that’s worth). The rest of the songs have very little bearing on the plot of the movie-- they do not move character development along and they don’t tell us more about the world we have entered. Tone Loc’s song is wildly out of place because it’s given to a lizard who comes out of nowhere and never comes back again. Why have a character just for a song? I need theater people to let me know what musicals do this successfully. (If there are any.) I don’t have the knowledge. Overall, I was really left wanting more character development and less music. 

God, I would love to learn more about the other characters. Crysta’s father is around for all of four minutes. What’s his deal? Where’s her mother? We’re introduced to the Beetle Boys who are tiny people that ride beetles because they are not fairies and don’t have wings. I repeat, they’re not fairies but live with fairies! They’re tiny people but they’re not humans! WHAT ARE THEY?! Please explain. And why is Magi the leader of the fairies, where does she get her powers from? Why is Crysta the obvious choice to be her predecessor? There is a lot that could be done with music to give us more details. Instead they all just kind of… exist.

Ok, now I will tell you what does hold up pretty well: our villain Hexxus (Curry) and any of the scary/destructive animation. Other than the Batty rap, I also had the memory of the rainforest trees being brutally tagged with giant red X’s burned into my brain. I was viscerally afraid for the trees. Now, given that the main point of the movie was to highlight the importance of conservation, I have to say they nailed that part. I was terrified every time I didn’t recycle a piece of paper at school. The messaging is so strong, that if it was made today you’d have armies of people protesting it for being liberal propaganda. (Even though conservation should be politically neutral in my opinion…)

Anyway, Hexxus is an amorphous blob of oil and toxicity that grows by huffing exhaust. The animation of this being and the tree he comes from probably gave a number of kids nightmares. Now that is a true villain. Outside of scaring the shit out of kids, the animation of the overall movie can seem sketchy at times. And I am not just saying that compared to today’s standards. Ferngully notoriously came out the same year as Aladdin and yet it still looks a few years behind. It does have its moments like a particularly beautiful starry night, an underwater swim, and Zak surfing on a leaf through the rainforest that are easy to appreciate. 

And before you come to fight me, please know that it’s not lost on me that Aladdin had DISNEY MONEY and Ferngully was made by a small studio that was eventually absorbed by a bigger one. It was never going to have the ability to be as technologically advanced as Aladdin, but despite that, it did capture the imaginations of kids all over the world. We were invested in Ferngully and Crysta and Zak. We rooted for them when they kissed. We were scared (terribly scared) of Hexxus. And most importantly, we were ready to fight for the rainforest. 

And wouldn’t you know it - I’m feeling inspired again. I’ll be donating $1 for every view on this Substack post to Rainforest Foundation US and I urge you to do the following:

So while most elements of this movie didn’t hold up and I kind of wish it just lived in my memory (thanks Mike, I can never go back), it did remind me that we once lived during a time when giving a shit about the world meant something. I think lately it has felt easy to accept defeat and feel powerless. But if Crysta can summon the power of Magi (or whatever) and defeat Hexxus, you can pull some cash and energy together for the rainforest. 

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