The Last Unicorn (1982) Review

           The Last Unicorn (1982) is an animated movie where a unicorn named Lady Amalthea (voiced by Mia Farrow) just learned that she's the last unicorn in existent. Thus, she sets off of a journey finding the other unicorns and trying to figure out where they've all gone off to, whilst meeting a few characters along the way including witches, magicians, princes and more.

           Now before I get into my thoughts on this movie, I want to discuss how I discovered this movie. I was looking in the Classics genre in the iTunes movie section, and I saw the poster for this movie called "The Last Unicorn", and I was like, 'what the heck is that?' I've honestly never heard of this movie before, so I saw a little clip of it which looked promising, and after doing a little research, I noticed that this was made by the same people responsible for the infamous 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' stop-motion TV special, Rankin and Bass. So then I decided to buy a digital copy of it for myself and give it a try, just so I can see if I like it or not. How was it?

           Well, one thing I really enjoyed when watching this movie was looking at the animation and background art. It looked so beautiful being filled with bright colors. I really felt like I was in a fairy tale. The art is what kept me interested throughout the entire run time. There are songs here by the band 'America', and while I wouldn't say they're memorable, they get the job done well enough. The voice acting isn't half- bad either. I especially enjoyed Rene Auberjonois as this skull that guards a clock. He was amusing.

            I honestly wish the characters were just as brilliant as the art, but unfortunately, they aren't. They're pretty much flat and not very interesting, and this dragged the movie down a lot for me, as of course this film wants you to actually root for the heroes. And that's too bad. There were certain points where I found the writing interesting with the riddles and such, but then at other times, it just felt very stilted. The movie tries to bring some sort of relationship between the unicorn and a prince, but not once did I ever feel any sort of romance or chemistry between the two characters. And even at 92 minutes, there were a few times when the movie felt rather slow.

            This movie is rated 'G', but you have to understand that this was rated back in 1982 during a time when it was considered okay to use the words 'damn' and 'hell' in a G-rated movie. So this is a caution for any parents out there that are potentially curious about showing it to their kids. Personally, this didn't bother me, but I can see how some parents might be turned off by that.

            "The Last Unicorn" might be worth a look if you enjoy great visual art, and I might revisit it from time to time for that reason alone. For everyone else though, it's really hard for me to recommend it, as the problems I have with it drag this movie down to average.

             I give "The Last Unicorn" directed by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. a 5 out of 10.