I first heard of this film when I read about it in the Wikipedia article about the Nostalgia Critic episodes from 2011 and I watched his review of the film on YouTube. After having watched it, it didn't look as bad as I thought it would be, despite Pips having his wings missing during the flight to the human world and the wings of the other fairies barely moving at one point, which were flaws the Nostalgia Critic pointed out himself. I spent ages wondering how to see this film when earlier on I saw that it had been uploaded onto YouTube so I gave it a go. By the time I'd finished watching it, I was satisfied with it since I found it on par with the original that I saw as a kid but I found the climax overlong.
The animation is decent for the most part with good uses of cel-shading and lip-sync but it is choppy and wobbly in places and has its flaws as I mentioned already. There was a wider variety of backgrounds compared to the first film but the fairground scene had more vibrancy than FernGully. I was also pleased to see additional human characters such as the poachers (the tall one being the most oddly designed with his super-long chin), Budgie (an unusual name for a girl) and her grandfather while the baby animals are adorable. The writing is not quite as smart as that in the original but I still liked the fairies' and bugs' perceptions of the tap water as a river and the light bulb of the lamp as the sun. The musical score is whimsical and the two most memorable songs are the opening number and the one performed by Batty and the baby animals while they are trapped in their crates inside the poachers' warehouse. I was happy that the iguana/lizard-type character didn't sing in this film because his song in the original was tuneless and pointless. As for Batty, he's not quite as funny as he was in the original while Christa and Pips have barely changed since then. The story is just as decent as the animation with a different environmental message from the original but I felt the first scene of the poachers sitting around the campfire didn't go anywhere and the pace was fairly even until the climax, which made this part of the film drag on. Moving onto the voice acting, it was adequate but didn't feature any of the original cast, which is yet another weak point of this film besides its animation flaws and somewhat uneven pace.
Overall this film is on the same level as the original (likewise with the first two 'Home Alone' films and the Disney's 'Cinderella' franchise) despite its errors, overlong climax, scene that went nowhere and none of the original voice cast returning. 8/10.
The animation is decent for the most part with good uses of cel-shading and lip-sync but it is choppy and wobbly in places and has its flaws as I mentioned already. There was a wider variety of backgrounds compared to the first film but the fairground scene had more vibrancy than FernGully. I was also pleased to see additional human characters such as the poachers (the tall one being the most oddly designed with his super-long chin), Budgie (an unusual name for a girl) and her grandfather while the baby animals are adorable. The writing is not quite as smart as that in the original but I still liked the fairies' and bugs' perceptions of the tap water as a river and the light bulb of the lamp as the sun. The musical score is whimsical and the two most memorable songs are the opening number and the one performed by Batty and the baby animals while they are trapped in their crates inside the poachers' warehouse. I was happy that the iguana/lizard-type character didn't sing in this film because his song in the original was tuneless and pointless. As for Batty, he's not quite as funny as he was in the original while Christa and Pips have barely changed since then. The story is just as decent as the animation with a different environmental message from the original but I felt the first scene of the poachers sitting around the campfire didn't go anywhere and the pace was fairly even until the climax, which made this part of the film drag on. Moving onto the voice acting, it was adequate but didn't feature any of the original cast, which is yet another weak point of this film besides its animation flaws and somewhat uneven pace.
Overall this film is on the same level as the original (likewise with the first two 'Home Alone' films and the Disney's 'Cinderella' franchise) despite its errors, overlong climax, scene that went nowhere and none of the original voice cast returning. 8/10.