Unicorns, Red Bull, and Well-Endowed Trees

Everyone is celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Back To the Future and I’m right there with them, but I stumbled on Rankin-Bass’s The Last Unicorn the other day while puttering around Tubi and a light went on.

I haven’t seen this movie in almost forty years. It would have been on TV or VHS, either of which would have obviously been a big deal because VOD didn’t exist yet. The Last Unicorn was released in 1982, right at the beginning of the unicorn craze of the 1980s, or maybe it heralded it. Either way, the timing was impeccable.

As a kid, I remember loving The Last Unicorn. It had a unicorn, it had magic, it had romance, it had music, it was a little bit edgy and a bit more grown up than a Disney movie, and it looked very distinctive, like the anime that was starting to show up on afternoon TV. Put it next to Voltron and Star Blazers and it would have fit in nicely.

Forty-odd years later, though, how does The Last Unicorn hold up? Heh. Heh. Heh.

Let’s start at the beginning, of course, when a pair of hunters ride into the woods to go hunting. These are no ordinary woods, though, because the world’s last unicorn (Mia Farrow) lives there. An evil red bull drove the rest of the unicorns to the ends of the earth, and she’s the only one left. This bull resides at the castle of King Haggard (Christopher Lee), on a mountain overlooking the sea.

Wisely, these two guys ride back out, with the older of the two wishing the Unicorn well. She’s watching from the shadows, and she’s aghast to hear that she’s the last of her kind. The easy thing would be to stay in her woods with her woodland creature friends, but the Unicorn wants to find that bull and find those other unicorns.

The Unicorn starts on her long journey, and she finds out really quickly that everyone sees her differently. Most people think she’s just a very pretty white horse, while others know right off the bat that she’s a unicorn.

Mommy Fortuna (Angela Lansbury), for instance, puts the Unicorn in a cage to make her part of her sideshow of magical creatures. Most of the creatures aren’t what they appear to be, like the Manticor, for example, is really a very old lion. The other real magical creature, the Harpy (Keenan Wynn) promises that she’ll kill Mommy if she’s ever freed.

Long story short, the Harpy is freed, she kills Mommy, and the Unicorn and a new friend, magician Schmendrick (Alan Arkin) head for the hills, or more precisely, the forest, where they run into a group of bandits and the next member of their party, Molly Grue (Tammy Grimes). Another long story short, Molly’s angry at the Unicorn at first for not appearing to her when she was young, but she and the Unicorn hug it out, so it’s all good.

Molly is a handy person to have around, because she lets Schemendrick and the Unicorn know that they’re going the wrong way. After that, it doesn’t take long for them to get to King Haggard’s kingdom. Or to roust out the Red Bull.

And yes, it’s totally natural to think of the drink, only this Red Bull doesn’t give you wings.

Anyway, Schmendrick, whose control over his magical powers is shaky at best (more on that later), turns the Unicorn into a woman, which drives the Red Bull away. He, Molly, and the Unicorn, who Schmedrick calls Lady Almalthea, talk their way into the castle. There, they not only find King Haggard and the Bull, but a magician named Mabruk (Paul Frees) who’s immediately suspicious of the Unicorn, er, Amalthea, and the Prince Lir (Jeff Bridges) who gets very big eyes.

Oh, and there’s a very chatty skeleton (Rene Auberjonois) that really likes wine. Like, he really likes wine.

Anyway, everyone ensconces themselves into various roles around the castle, and Prince Lir and Amalthea fall in love, which means her Unicorn instincts get less while the human ones get stronger. Will the quest be fulfilled, or will Amalthea settle into a comfortable and ultimately mortal human existence?

So yeah, let’s talk about The Last Unicorn. It’s been said that one’s opinion of the film evolves with age, and I wholeheartedly agree. The movie looks beautiful, with a nicely fluid art style, and it’s got a fantastic voice cast who all give great performances. Mia Farrow is a particular highlight, because she’s got a light, wispy, innocent tone to her voice and almost sounds like Audrey Hepburn. Tammy Grimes, who I don’t think ever gave a bad performance in her life, is wonderful as Molly.

There was a lot of stuff that would have gone over my head when I was a kid, like the theme of mortality, for one, and what it must feel like for a formerly immortal creature to suddenly be confronted with the possibility of their own death. Or with the idea of falling in love. The Last Unicorn is a very complex story.

That being established, there is weirdness aplenty. Like other Rankin-Bass movies, The Last Unicorn is almost over-animated in spots, with characters moving way more than necessary. A rabbit, for instance, hopping through the forest, jiggles like Jello even after they’ve stopped hopping. I don’t know why the animators did this, but it looks goofy and it happens all over the movie.

The songs are sometimes decent but at other times pretty unfortunate. There’s a butterfly (Robert Klein) in the first few minutes of the movie who sings snatches of songs, many of them from the Great American Songbook, which doesn’t do the immersion factor any favors. Most of the rest of the songs are sung by America, but Jeff Bridges and Mia Farrow try their voices on one of them, and the best thing I can say is that they can mostly carry a tune. The song itself is easily forgettable.

What’s not forgettable, though, is this movie’s obsession with boobs. Yeah. In a kid’s movie. I am so not kidding. The Harpy has large, protruding nipples, which aren’t noticeable until she starts flying, but once she does, they’re pretty hard to miss. All six of ’em. The Unicorn is nude when she’s first transformed into a human, and while it’s understandable, we, well, see things.

Then there was a character that I dubbed “The Boob Tree,” for lack of a better descriptor. Remember the Inuit lady in The Simpsons Movie? The Boob Tree makes her look downright petite.

And what does The Boob Tree do? Well, in between Schmendrick and the Unicorn finding the bandits and Molly joining the quest, the bandits tie Schmendrick to a very old, very knobbly Douglas fir, and Schmendrick tries to enchant his way out. Unfortunately, the spell brings the tree to life, and the tree squeezes Schemendrick between her boobs.

This uncomfortable scene probably only lasts for about two or three minutes, but it feels so much longer because the tree is aggressive and does not take “No” for an answer. The Unicorn eventually bails Schmendrick out, and it can’t happen soon enough.

Yipe. I feel weird even talking about this. Plenty of other critics and bloggers probably do as well, because the Boob Tree is the one character in the movie that isn’t mentioned in most plot summaries or credited to any actor. Really, though, what is a scene like that doing in a G-rated movie? And what actor is going to admit to playing such a role, even for just five minutes? Maybe they thought people wouldn’t notice. Well, kids might not. I sure didn’t as a kid, or maybe I blocked it out.

Adult me couldn’t unsee it. My newly-minted college kid son giggled his head off at me calling that thing “The Boob Tree,” though.

That aside, it was fun going back to The Last Unicorn. Most of it’s aged pretty well, even if certain bits haven’t.

A new Julia Child post is on the way Friday. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…

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The Last Unicorn is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon. It is also currently streaming on Prime and Tubi.

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