Les Merveilleuses aventures de Crysta

Let me first start by saying that I am a huge fan of the first movie, The Last Rainforest: with its intriguing animation, original beautiful storyline with the strong themes of environmentalism and deforestation. The characters were splendid and fresh, and the villain Hexuss, played by Tim Curry, absolutely terrified me as a child.

So watching this movie felt like someone was attempting to butcher it beyond recognition.

The first of the many things I saw wrong with this film is the animation. It's cheap, flat and uninteresting. There is no plot, so to speak of. A few hunters kidnap baby animals (who are not even that cute or worth feeling too sorry for) and the residents of Ferngully have to go and rescue them.

All the actors from the original film have been replaced by less professional voice actors. The characters are simply cardboard cut outs of the original. Crysta seems to have completely forgotten about Zak, their relationship being the core center of the first film, and Pips is complaining about nothing.

But the worst change is Batty. Voiced by Robin Williams in the first, the newly voiced Batty in this sequel is just loud and abrasive. For some unknown reason, his head antenna is missing, he has hands instead claws and automatically overcomes his fear of humans to cheer the animals up when they are locked away. And the villains are just the most awful creations ever. They are the repeated stereotypical human hunters who view animals as nothing more than object to be killed and sold over for money, with horribly bad dialogue and silly laughs.

Avoid at all costs.

The original FernGully is one of my all time favourites, it is funny, beautifully animated, moving and even scary in places. Not to mention underrated. In fact, its only problem was that it was too short. However, the sequel, while I didn't think was as awful as the cheap and unnecessary Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy To The Rescue, was very disappointing. It had a nice idea but just didn't work.

There are a couple of redeeming qualities. One was that the music, while nowhere near as good as the original's music(that score is beautiful), was not so bad. Whether it is memorable though that's the thing. Second was that it does have a nice message. Third, the baby animals and Budgie are very sweet and cute.

Sadly, that's where the redeeming qualities end. I will warn you I will be comparing a bit here. This sequel did have some very cheesy moments, and lacked the magic of the first film. One of my first problems was the animation. The original FernGully's animation was colourful, fluid and solid. Here it was rather dull and tacky, plus the colours looked much flatter than they should have done. Also in the original, FernGully itself had a sense of wonder, and it was like a Fairytopia, but I didn't get that here. FernGully seemed rather... how do I put it simply, ordinary I suppose. The writing was also nothing to write home about, and even with the presence of Batty, the whole adventure suffered from a lack of laughs.

The villains were rather lame, compared to the terrifying Hexxus. Hexxus gave me nightmares when I first saw the original at 9 years old, and it was not only how he was animated, but also Tim Curry's (a very talented and underrated actor) imperiously chilling vocal performance. Sadly, the villains, poachers here, weren't at all threatening, and even worse, they were poorly drawn, and most of their dialogue is unbelievably bad. The story admittedly was a nice idea, if only it didn't take such a long time to get going. There are a number of long, drawn out and even pointless scenes, giving the film an uneven sense of pulse.

The characters weren't as likable as they were in the first movie, and I did think overall the voice acting was poor. Crysta has lost her spunk, determination and even vivacity here. And in the sequel, most of it was about Pips, seeing that Crytsta is such a great character, there should have been more of her and she should've gone on the rescue mission too. I am wondering, whether the filmmakers were the same as the original, I would be surprised if so, seeing how much it deviates from the original. And although Zak isn't in this sequel, seeing as his and Crysta's relationship was one of the original's main focuses, I was saddened that Crysta appears to have completely forgotten about him. The character I had the biggest problem with though was Batty. First of all, I hated how he was animated. Secondly, Robin Williams actually made the first movie, he was absolutely hilarious and his humour effortless. However, I didn't like the new voice actor at all, he lacked the hilarity and vibrancy of Williams, and I found him rather loud and abrasive too. It certainly didn't help with the dialogue he was given, how lame was it? Very!

All in all, a hugely disappointing sequel, with very little of the magic of the beautiful original. I almost forgot to mention the ending, it wasn't as powerful or even poignant as the one in the first one. Kids may like it, but fans of the original and adults are guaranteed to be disappointed. 3/10 Bethany Cox

when we watched fern gully as a kid we fell in love and watched it at least 20 times, a few years later i rented this movie and didn't bother to finish watching after 15 mins. Watching them both years later i still love ferngully but ferngully 2 may as well have been made by monkeys. It has no quality music, no memorable moments, sure it has magic but it's meaningless, there's no deeper meaning, they didn't have robin Williams and the voices are horrible. The only good thing in this film is about saving wildlife from poachers but the way that they went about it...i expect this kind of stuff from crappy TV series, not sequels based on a truly great film

regards, Reaper

How could you ruin the beauty of which the movie first started off as. There's non of that magic that part 1 had. This was my childhood ruined. Non of the love in the last movie continued on to this one. I would love to see a part 3 where they redeem them selves.

In the first movie batty was goofier and lost his antenna? He also has human hands? what why and sadly Robin Williams fit the part just well. Pips changed totally, he acts like the hero instead of the cocky type of guy we used to know in the past.

The graphics, what happened?!? You would improve them from one movie to another. Some how they just degraded!

Talking about a movie that does pretty much everything wrong! Please meet "FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue"! Perhaps the absolute worst sequel of all time!

Really, there just are no redeeming qualities about this movie. The only reason why I won't give it a 1 rating is because it still has some decent animation. So out of respect for the hard working animators, I'm giving this movie an extra point but that's about as kind as I can get for this movie.

In all honesty, it still starts off OK enough. Nothing too special but it at least seemed like it was going to have a decent enough story in it. The movie however very rapidly starts to get worse and the final 30 minutes of this movie are just totally unwatchable!

The first movie already of course had an environmental message in it but this movie goes completely overboard, with its cuddly animals and its message that is too thick on top. It's incredibly annoying and I just can't see how anyone could ever enjoy this movie, not even little kids. But the worst thing about the story remains that it's completely going nowhere, after a while. It gets sidetracked and doesn't ever get back on track on time again.

The movie also features some of the absolute worst voice acting I have ever heard in an animated movie! If you are a person who thinks that it doesn't really matter who voices an animated character, you should really watch this movie! Afterward you will realize how important right casting- but also acting skills are, for a voice actor. It might have been possible that the voice actors had to do their lines, before the movie was even finished, so they had nothing to work with yet. It surely does sound that way, since the voices aren't really always corresponding with what is going on the screen and the characters don't interact very well or naturally with each other.

It's also weird to hear all of the the characters from the first movie getting voiced by some completely different people in this sequel, who don't sound at all like the original actors. This is especially notable for the Batty character, who in the first movie got voiced by THE Robin Williams.

Also the songs in this movie are some of the absolute worst ones you will ever hear! Why do animated movies actually so often feel the need to have songs in it anyway? There is no good reason for the songs to be in this movie and it's only distracting and annoying, also because it's so absolutely horrendous to listen to.

The movie gets all the more worse to watch, when it also decides to be cuddly cute. It's just too sugarcoated all and terribly forced. It makes you mad to watch, instead of warm and mellow.

Believe me, this movie is even worse than I'm making it sound already!

2/10

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