Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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51 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Took a Risk, wasnt dissapointed, November 16, 2002
I took a risk on this one, I love unicorns, and i should not have gotten this but i did...And it was a GOOD CHOICE. Although a little too young for me, it was great for my little cousing (11 years old) she liked it. It is a story of a girl that wishes for a unicorn when her favorite mare is pregnant and the mare gives birth to one. They try to keep it a secret, but that proves more difficult than they expected. Great for children and unicorn lovers. The unicorn is cute although a little odd looking...great glowing effect on its entire body!
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not corny but an allegory, January 24, 2005
If your child is learning about allegories, this is a good illustration. Polly learns that her mare is dying in birth and prays for help to the unicorn that guards horses in horse heaven. A male unicorn is born; when Polly hugs it, her scraped knee is healed. The unicorn is the focus of three groups of criminals who want to steal it. A particularly cruel circus master wants the unicorn to do tricks in his circus. He puts the unicorn on display in his circus, whips it and tortures it to do what he wants. Polly and her friend rescue the unicorn. In the end she sets it free, where it flies into the sky and disappears, releasing its magic over the earth. The animation of the just-born unicorn foal soon after the story starts is awkward, and my eight-year old was disappointed. But when the movie switched to a real horse "actor", graphically enhanced as a unicorn, she was entranced. There's slapstick with the devious horse-nappers that is out-of-sync with the rest of the story, but kids don't seem to notice this jarring switch.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
All Show, No Depth, January 12, 2006
Ever since I was little, I have absolutely loved unicorns. When I saw this DVD advertised here on Amazon, I looked into it and found what looked like a good movie with an interesting plot. The story revolves around a little girl, Polly, whose old mare gives birth to a unicorn foal before dying. Polly soon comes to love the foal, of course, and pretty soon her love and loyalty are tested when a bunch of greedy circus people attempt to steal the unicorn for publicity purposes. I decided to give the movie the benefit of the doubt and bought it sight unseen. Sadly, this was a mistake.
I guess I should have paid more attention to the negative reviews, because corniness was only one of this movie's faults. For starters, the depth of the story I had hoped for simply isn't there; the movie's tone is so completely juvenile, I expect only really small children would appreciate it. You may very well think,"Well, of COURSE it's juvenile; it's a kid's movie!" It's been my experience, however, that a really good children's movie will move adults as well. Such classics as, "Narnia", "The Secret Garden", "A Little Princess", and the wonderful "Harry Potter" series are all stories that, while often marketed as being for kids, have proven to affect adults as much as children (if not more so).
The characters in this movie are not in the least memorable and not very believable as people. The "heroine" annoyed me instead of rousing my sympathy, and the so-called villains seemed to be nothing more than morons who were placed in the story to be made fools of. The leader of the circus was a greedy jerk, but there's not much more to be said for his character as far as affectiveness goes. The rest of the "bad guys" were embarassingly stupid. Trust me, Daniel Stern was more terrifying in the "Home Alone" series than these guys. The only faintly good point of the film was the unicorn, although he certainly couldn't save the film all by himself. Even he, however, had a few downfalls. As an adult, the unicorn is realistically played by a real horse, with a gorgeous glowing effect that magnifies his magical appearance. When he first appears as a foal, however, he is not played by a real horse but created with the most pathetic animation I've ever seen. The flying scenes were awkward as well and somewhat took away from the magical effect of the unicorn. The ending of the movie was abrupt and rather awkward, trying to patch a bunch of different resolutions together in one scene (more than one character had some sort of dilemma going on).
All together, this film tried to be moving but came off as a bad caricature of a moving film rather than the real thing. You may think I'm being too harsh since it is, after all, just a kid's film. However, if this is what's considered the ideal children's film, then I strongly believe that children are not being given enough credit. Children are multi-dimensional in many ways and a movie should not be dumbed down in order to impress them. I certainly don't think this film is harmful to kids-it probably won't affect them much at all if they're over four-but I would say it's totally unnecessary for their intellectual development. I guess it depends on what you're looking for; if you want a film that effectively teaches morals, I recommend you look elsewhere (check out the movies I listed earlier). On the other hand, if you'd like a film that resembles a circus-pretty good entertainment, nice special effects, and no depth whatsoever-you might very well prefer this one.
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