Any film announcing itself as Apocalypse Now meets The Care Bears has some pretty wacky shoes to fill. The Spanish-French animated co-production Unicorn Wars promises such a thing with it's story a a teddy bear platoon that train to take down an environmentalist group of unicorns in an enchanted wood.
It's not hard to see that this film is aiming for satire of religious hatred and warfare, it's fairly obvious from the opening minutes we're heading in that direction and thanks in no small part to some gorgeous 2D animation the film looks amazing. What this film doesn't have is the razor wit that it's premise promises, neither full of witty observations of warfare or a nasty anti-cute sensibility that something from the South Park guys might have created.
What the film looks like is a mash-up of Team America: World Police and Happy Tree Friends, perhaps offering subversive delight with some animated carnage. Instead most of the story is taken up with a sibling hatred between Bluey and Tubby. This could have been interesting is again it was done with any wit but it's sadly played out in the most obvious way.
What the film ends up being is a stereotypical war film that has this animated element tacked on for no reason, it's points about religious hatred and environmental collapse are interesting but they feed into the same usual points made by these sorts of films offering little more than a cute diversion that won't last in the memory beyond it's runtime.
Unicorn Wars will be screened at BFI London Film Festival 2022
