Review: The Last Unicorn is One of the Weirdest Kid’s Movies I’ve Ever Seen (Spoilers)

One of the movies that my family would occasionally borrow from the library when I was really young was The Last Unicorn, an animated movie that came out in 1982 that I’m sure most of you Gen Xers have seen. I remembered parts and pieces of it such as the animation style, the scene with the tree that’s in love with Shmendrick the Magician, the terrible music, and the fact that Christopher Lee voiced King Haggard. Other than that, I didn’t remember much of the plot at all, so when I watched the movie for the first time in many years, I kind-of felt like I was watching it for the first time…and it was disturbing, more so than I remembered it.

#1: The Plot

Something I didn’t know about The Last Unicorn was that it was inspired by a book by the same name that came out in 1968. From the Wikipedia article about it, the movie seems to follow the book almost perfectly, though they never revealed who Prince Lir’s real father was as Peter S. Beagle (the author of The Last Unicorn) did in the book. To sum up the story, two hunters come by and talk about how unicorns don’t exist anymore and were all killed. A unicorn (who I’m just going to call Amalthea since she’s later called that anyway), hears this and asks a butterfly if it’s true. He tells her the story of the Red Bull and how it chased all the unicorns into the sea (unfortunately, this Red Bull doesn’t give you wings), and Amalthea is the only one left. She then decides to go on a quest to find her fellow unicorns and defeat the Red Bull, eventually getting captured by a witch named Mommy Fortuna. Luckily, a magician traveling with Mommy’s carnival named Shmendrick has pity on Amalthea and frees her, which results in Mommy finding out, a big fight happening, and a harpy getting released and killing her. From there, Amalthea and Shmendrick continue on their journey, running into some bandits, gaining a new friend, Molly, and are attacked by the Red Bull, who is released from King Haggard’s castle at the same time every night to find the last unicorn. Shmendrick accidentally transforms Amalthea into a human woman, saving her from the bull, but also giving her amnesia as to who she is and why she’s with them. She’s taken to Haggard’s castle, is introduced as Princess Amalthea, and while she tries to remember why she’s there and wonders why Prince Lir is in love with her, Shmendrick and Molly work on trying to find out where the Red Bull is so they can hopefully follow it to wherever the unicorns are. They eventually find it, Amalthea becomes a unicorn again, the bull is driven into the sea, Prince Lir is killed by she revives him, and the unicorns are freed, destroying King Haggard’s castle.

It’s a pretty straightforward story with not a whole ton of side plots in it that would cram the movie, something that we don’t see a lot in media in general nowadays. It’s a story that moves quickly in one direction with not a ton of side plots trying to justify character’s actions, their backstories or anything like that. The only side plots we really get that explain much back story are thrown in occasionally in a line of dialogue here and there but aren’t elaborated much on.

#2: Deeper Meaning Behind the Unicorn

Throughout history, the unicorn has been many things, but in most cases, it’s representative of health, purity, innocence, beauty, freedom, joy, and hope. We see this a lot in The Last Unicorn in character’s reactions to Amalthea, particularly in Molly and Haggard’s reactions to her. When Molly first meets Amalthea, she first stands there in disbelief and then starts yelling at her. She demands to know where Amalthea and the other unicorns were when she was a maiden and why, “after all these years”, one has come to her when she is possibly in her mid-to-late-30s and has lost her innocence and her hope. This is a heartbreaking scene as she begins to sob and eventually forgives Amalthea for not being there, saying: “It would be the last unicorn in the world that came to Molly Grue.” Amalthea’s presence restores Molly’s hope and seems to give her a new lease on life. Later, when Amalthea is turned into a human, we see Molly’s grief for her because she knows how much pain goes into being a human and she doesn’t want Amalthea to become as jaded as she once was.

Additionally, when Amalthea is brought to King Haggard, he explains why he captured the unicorns and trapped them in the sea. He says that they are the only thing that can make him happy and will not stop until he has every one of them so he basically can have all the happiness in the world. Partially from the fact that he’s played by Christopher Lee and partially because of how great the writing in this movie is, we can get the sense that Haggard is a greedy man who is (like Molly once was) jaded by the world and by his own issues. He wants to feel something positive again and as the unicorns are walking representations of the hope, innocence, youth, beauty, etc. that he has lost, he wants to keep them forever, though he soon finds that he will not be able to do that.

Like with Labyrinth, this movie is a story of growing up and losing innocence to experience, however I think this movie does a better job at this than Labyrinth did because it offers the perspective of people who have already been hurt by life. When we’re children, we tend to try and think the best of everyone and everything. We live in our own little worlds where everything seems bright and hopeful. In ideal situations, we haven’t had to be weighed down by the pains of life and loss of innocence. We are free from much worry and happiness comes much quicker to us. This freedom from worry and easy joy is represented by the unicorn. As we grow up, however, and more responsibilities come to us and we must begin to worry more about everything, we become more and more like Molly, desperately wishing for the unicorn again. Eventually, though, we must let go (which we see at the end of the movie) and content ourselves with the memories of childhood and things that we can find joy in now.

#3: The Animation

I’m not a fan of animation from the 80s. Some of it looks good, but a lot of the time, the characters look like they were drawn by someone on a trip. Unfortunately for The Last Unicorn, most of the characters look like the latter most of the time. Shmendrick and Molly’s faces don’t look right, that tree that falls in love with Shmendrick is just…why…etc. Some of this is intentional, such as with King Haggard’s design, but with other characters where they’re supposed to be the good guys, it just looks off. The only characters where I would say that the animator did a good job drawing them are Prince Lir and Amalthea in human form (her legs are so twiggy as a unicorn that I have no idea how she can walk). It’s pretty much the same art style that you get in the 1970’s adaptation of The Hobbit. On the bright side, at least the backgrounds are nice.

#4: The Music

Most of the time, the music does a great job of helping carry the movie, highlighting emotional scenes such as Molly yelling at Amalthea, the Red Bull chasing down the unicorns, etc. Other times, however, it’s used as a way to speed up the story via a montage (We get two or three montages in this film. Christian movie directors everywhere are sobbing their hearts out.) While the montages are pretty and convey a lot of the story that would make the movie way too long, they are all done while the song “The Last Unicorn” by America plays. This song, though it works for the movie, is just annoying in my opinion. Some parts just sounded like the singer was an English-speaking goat and I was cringing. You just have to tune out the music during the montages.

Until next time,

M.J.