The Last Unicorn (1982)
Dir. Arthur Rankin Jr., Jules Bass
Starring: Mia Farrow, Alan Arkin
The Last Unicorn is an animated fantasy film based on Peter S. Beagle's novel of the same name. While the film was a childhood favourite of mine, I've never actually read the book so I don't know how faithful of an adaptation it is. When I was considering nominating this film, I hadn't seen it in over 15 years, and while it didn't quite live up to nostalgia, I still thought it was worthy of inclusion.
Even though Rankin/Bass was an American production company, the actual animation for their films were outsourced to various Japanese animation studios. For
The Last Unicorn, that studio was Topcraft, whose members later went on to form Studio Ghibli. So you might notice some stylistic similarities, though many of the human characters in
The Last Unicorn have features that are far more exaggerated than what I remember seeing in most Ghibli films. I prefer imperfect, traditional animation to the clean lines of CG, so while I personally love the look of this film, I'd certainly understand if someone thought it was far too rough.
What I like the most about this film is what had the biggest impact on me when I saw it as a kid, and that is the darker atmosphere and general unhappiness that permeates the story. The themes are more mature, dealing with depression, regret, and the reality that not all dreams can come true. It's a very sobering experience if you're expecting a light-hearted children's film. That seems to be a common theme running through the films I remember the most fondly from my childhood, so it's really a shame that we don't see many films like that for children any more.
While I like
most of the performances in this film, Jeff Bridges does a terrible job bringing his character to life, and both he and Mia Farrow have songs that made me turn the volume down so low I could barely hear it. Mia Farrow does otherwise do a really good job as the titular character, and Christopher Lee as King Haggard just feels perfect, though I could listen to him read anything and be content. Other than the aforementioned Farrow and Bridges songs, I like the rest of the music in this film, though after hearing
NSP's cover of the main theme, I like the original version much less now.
As I've already said in the thread, I have no idea how this movie is going to feel to someone who has no nostalgia for it, and it doesn't seem like many (if any) of you have seen it before. Hopefully you can make it past that irritating butterfly at the start, because I promise the rest of the film is, at the very, least not
that bad.