Unicorn Wars movie review & film summary (2023)
The film doesn’t hold back in terms of gore. In one scene, Azulín, Gordi, and company stumble onto a campground full of mutilated teddy corpses, with maggots falling from dead bears’ mouths and bear intestines draped from trees like bloody crepe paper. These creative tableaus of animated death speak to the joke that’s at the very core of this movie, the same joke that’s fueled a solid percentage of Adult Swim’s output over the years: Wouldn’t it be funny if cute stuff that’s meant for kids was actually, like, super messed up? This is, of course, a one-note premise and one whose novelty wears off fast. But while “Unicorn Wars” undoubtedly indulges this impulse—think cartoon genitalia and bears hanging themselves in despair—it thankfully also has more going on.
One of those things is the anti-Catholic theme mentioned above; the other is the rendering of the environment itself. While the teddy bears and their world are drawn in the style of a Saturday morning cartoon, other parts of the film use impressionistic techniques that read more like storybook illustrations or illuminated manuscripts. The influence of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli is evident in the parts of the film that actually engage with the unicorns, who have a sacred duty to protect the environment a lá “Princess Mononoke” and battle a burbling ball of anthropomorphic hate that recalls No-Face in “Spirited Away.” Combined with a painterly approach to its Lisa Frank-like color palette—think magenta, teal, hot pink, and neon blue—it’s all quite pleasurable to look at.
“Unicorn Wars” would be richer if it had spent more time developing this mythology rather than with our feuding bear brothers, whose story gets heavy-handed in the overstuffed, poorly paced back half of the movie. As Vázquez keeps adding elements in its last half hour, “Unicorn Wars” starts to feel like the beginning of a trilogy or maybe a TV series that got canceled unexpectedly and had to wrap up its storyline in a handful of episodes. But for a movie that, on its surface, runs a real risk of being a shallow joke painfully stretched out to feature length, maybe having too much going on is a blessing.
Now playing in theaters and available on digital platforms.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46upaKbn6e7bsPAq6pmpZ%2BrtqZ50Z6top2nYn9xfpI%3D