The Last Unicorn

-Artisan (1982)

Summary:

The last remaining unicorn in the world goes on a quest to find out what happened to all the other unicorns. Unicorn.

My Thoughts:

I don't know how I ended up watching this film. Oh wait, I do know… my friend Andy who can be a complex matrix of puzzlement brought it over one night saying it was, “awesome.” The box cover art features one of the most gayed up unicorn shots I have ever seen, so somehow I doubted him. He was adamant that The Last Unicorn was a completely amazing film and that I'd like it, so I took another look at the box and still found his statements hard to believe. Nevertheless, I promised that I'd watch it and review it for the site, so here goes.

I never heard about The Last Unicorn before it was brought to my attention by my friend. The most surprising thing about it was that it was a rather high budget affair for its time. The Last Unicorn comes from a time when no other cartoon was even remotely successful in the theaters aside from anything with a Disney name on it. And while it's no Disney extravaganza, they sure as hell were trying to make it like one. There is a notable high talent cast featuring the likes of Jeff Bridges, Mia Farrow, Robert Klein, Angela Lansburry, and Christopher Lee.

The Last Unicorn starts out with a unicorn in her happy little forest. Her life is changed with the arrival of world’s most annoying butterfly who informs her that she's all alone in the world. From then on some stuff happens, some of it interesting, a lot not. My primary thought as I watched it was that I don't know how this can be considered appropriate for children or adults. The tone of The Last Unicorn is that of darkness and sadness (except for the ending), but the plot isn't compelling enough to draw in an adult. The Last Unicorn is only children's film I've ever seen to feature more than a few tame swear words such as "hell" and "damn", plus a nude three breasted harpy in addition to that very same harpy brutally murdering two people, and an almost naked woman. Aside from these thoughts there wasn’t much of anything to really draw me into the film.

Besides the plot, the second major problem with The Last Unicorn is the music. All the songs are provided by the band America. No, I'm not kidding. For those of you who stay awake at night wondering what ever happened to America, then let me reassure you that they are still touring, unbelievable as that may seem. At the time this was written they played a free concert at a walleye fishing tourney in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You know, that's about as close to staring alongside a puppet show as it gets. I digress though, the songs America provides aren't all that bad, but they aren't all that good either. They aren't memorable or even catchy, which is something that makes Disney films as successful as they are. The singers of the songs aren't all that great especially the Prince played by Jeff Bridges who has a horrible number that viewers can look forward to.

The best thing that The Last Unicorn has going for it is that it isn’t a typical Disney film. I know I’ve gone on and on in this review of what has been considered a successful cartoon film using Disney as an example, but there’s something to be said about a film that tries to be different. Things like the evil villain being identifiable makes it hard for me to hate it.

Another good point of The Last Unicorn is the animation. The animation is rather decent, and at times fairly cool because of the dark style, but it also isn't high quality stuff. It sort of resembles a Saturday morning cartoon rather than a feature film; or rather a Saturday morning cartoon your Mother was afraid to let you watch.

The DVD edition is simply bad. I could only recommend buying it if you like this film a lot. This is perhaps the worst full frame edition I have ever seen. Most of the time the framing is completely off and your forced to watch halves of characters communicating. To top it off, the source print is getting old and dirty. Perhaps someday some money will be put into a better version that’s widescreen with a cleaner print, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

In the end, all I can say is that The Last Unicorn is not a good film, unless you saw it as a kid. I don't mean to disappoint my friend, but come on this thing isn’t that good if you are watching this for the first time later in life. Still, there is something about The Last Unicorn if people still fondly remember it after all these years. If you are one of those people, check out this link. The Last Unicorn is being re-made! My buddy will be jumping for joy, and hopefully they will keep the darker tone, but actually make the rest of the film good this time around. By the looks of the site it actually looks like it could be pretty good. The rest of us will just move on with our lives.

Extras:

There is nothing, nothing at all unless you count a motion menu as an extra.

Score:

Film: 5.5

Extras:  0.0

Edition: 2.0

-Paul