Once Upon a Forest (1993) - The best of garbage, which is still not good.

1993 was a very... odd time for animated movies. What were the most well known releases this year? Well there were movies like Batman: mask of the Phantasm and The Nightmare Before Christmas, but there was also Dragon Ball Z: Bojack Unbound, The Thief and the Cobbler, We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, I think it says something that most of the releases this year that people might be fond of were Japanese films like Sailor Moon R and Yu Yu Hakusho: The Movie. I mean, does anybody remember David Copperfield or Once Upon a Forest?

This is another one of those environmental awareness movies, like the previously reviewed FernGully: The Last Rainforest. Between the two of them, I think this movie is better, if only because I didn't feel completely preached at, but this movie still wasn't "good".

During an excursion with their teacher, four young forest animals find their forest home was destroyed by a toxic gas. After one of them gets deathly sick, the others have to find another meadow to gather some herbs, and they have to find them and return within a set time before their friend expires. Along the way, they meet incredible obstacles, strange situations and a gospel choir that makes me feel more uncomfortable than I did watching Dumbo... I'm going to chalk it up to Dumbo not having Timothy Mouse talk at the crows in their slang.

It's a basic adventure movie really. The characters move from one location to the next and deal with whatever obstacle is there. I really shouldn't be to hard on movies using this plot, it's been a standard for a long time, I mean The Divine Comedy is a classic example. The appeal of this kind of adventure story for writers is easy to understand, it can allow for interesting obstacles that the characters must stand up against, can lead to interesting locations and can lead to some good character interactions. Done right, you can get a movie like Kubo and the Two Strings or The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. Of course the downside is that if you do this story type poorly, you can end up with a story where the situations and locations are more interesting than the characters. Yellow Submarine worked because the locations were bizarre and literally otherworldly, and the Beavis and Butt-Head movie worked because of the characters complete lack of understanding of what was going on.

Speaking on characters, you don't have a bad selection, just not a very interesting one. You got your headstrong tough character who does first and thinks later, you have your smart and timid but heartful nerd, and you have the big eater dum-dum. You can tell which character arcs they're gonna get, one has to learn to not lead others into danger, one has to learn to stand up for themselves and one has to have their genius idea that proves they're not an idiot. I wouldn't say the characters are awful, but much like the plot, they're really nothing special.

As an aside, it is really hard to separate modern views on subjects like this. On the one hand, I can't be too hard on movies that keep to the formula because, well there is always the chance that this will be the first time someone sees this kind of story. This is a kids movie, so simple formulas are not too unwelcome. However, it really is hard to not notice when this is getting repeated, and unless you really like this kind of thing, you're going to want to see new twists on the formula. This was a big problem I had with Klaus, which, while still a good movie, had a very formulaic plot that I could see where it was going before it got there. Whether or not this thing bothers you... well it depends on you more than anything else.

As for the technicals of this movie, the best I can say is that they're mixed. The animation is, mostly good. There were some moments that didn't sit right with me, but rather than try to explain it, I'll just say that, I can understand if someone thinks the animation is good or bad. It does look appealing, not visually stunning, but I can look at it and see that some talent was put into it. There weren't any moments that looked ugly, super bright or visually unpleasing. I can give it a pass for the animation.

Music wise, on the other hand is... a half mark. This is another example of a "pseudo-musical", a movie that only qualifies as a musical because it has more than one song in it, but no more than three. The two songs in this movie were... not good. The first song is sung by Michael Crawford, so, take that for what it's worth. Honestly I can't really decide if I disliked the song or if I just thought it was bland, and the other song was part of that scene with the gospel birds. Thankfully the background music was not too bad, but it wasn't very memorable either. I think the technicals are another aspect of this movie that are nothing special.

Really, "nothing special" perfectly summarizes the movie. The animation isn't terrible, the music isn't unlistenable, the characters aren't awful and the plot isn't a mess, but it's all nothing special. It's a harmless watch, I can see someone watching this with their kids and not hating it, or even as a morbid curiosity viewing. It's harmless, but nothing special. Even for kids, I can recommend something like Smallfoot, which is also rather safe but still offers a bit more than this movie. While I can see people watching this movie, I can't see anyone really loving it, so I can't really recommend this movie. It's better than FernGully, but that really isn't saying a whole lot.