FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue

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All the actors from the original film have been replaced by less professional voice actors.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.