This one I neglected to review in the second generation Barbie movies which turned out was released inbetween Barbie in A Christmas Carol and Barbie and the Three Musketeers. And I might as well announce while I'm here is that I shall be reviewing the most recent ones from 2010 onwards in the third generation reboot (yes, including the ones with Diane Kaarina awfully replacing Kelly Sheridan as Barbie before the latter came back due to 'high fan demand'), but I thought I should quickly do this one first to make the second generation one more complete. And considering my past experiences with reviewing Don Bluth's 1994 Thumbelina and the other second generation Barbie movies, I'm very worried! Oh, and did I forget to mention that this particular Thumbelina movie is set during modern times? So will this show Thumbelina can survive in modern times, or is it as bad as the 1994 Thumbelina film? Let's find out!
Story: Like virtually every other Barbie film, this one is told as a story by Barbie to a class of children when one girl feels down about being given the smallest plant to look after when everyone points it out. This leads to the story of Thumbelina, only vastly different and honestly, for the worst. And did I mention there's an environmental message? An in your face, painful, blatantly obvious environmental message?! Well, that's the main theme of the movie and moral! Speaking of morals, they do the exact same thing as every other movie about everyone being special in their own way...just like every single Barbie movie ever and they really insultingly talk it down to their audience! Well, at least there's no obligatory love story & it focuses on the friendship between Makena & the main character, even if it's handled very poorly & is really underdeveloped! And it doesn't really help that the whole movie feels very anticlimatic, it doesn't take time to explain the world of the Twillerbees, the pacing is really inconsistent & overall, it feels lifeless. It's just another cashgrabber for girls to get the dolls, and boy does it show in the lack of effort in the plot besides the most blatant environmental message in a kid's film I've ever seen since Ferngully!
Animation: Oddly enough, this has some of the worst animation I've ever seen in the Barbie movies, yet again, despite the fact technology in CGI will have vastly improved since 2001! The character designs...oh God! Not only are they still very plastic-y and ugly, but the Twillerbees like Thumbelina, are virtually anorexic with huge alien-like eyes! I was just so disgusted that the character designers thought it actually looked good! And again, they clearly use the same models for the Twillerbees except with different coloured features like skin, hair and outfits! Pretty lazy, don't you think? And the backgrounds are either really generic city or forests just with different coloured leaves on them clumped on together. And the rendering on almost everything is very very poor! It's just so bad, it looks more like a student film than a direct to DVD animated feature! And no, having things coloured pink, purple or green does not mean it looks good!
Characters: Thumbelina is the brave one who is curious, free spirited and doesn't follow the rules and always puts her friends in danger without thinking of consequences AKA designated protagonist, Makena is her human friend who's a spoilt brat and is very very annoying and insufferable, even when she changes her ways and it's implied it's because her parents don't have the time to talk to her. Thumbelina's friends are also annoying and never shut up. Myron, the 'villain' is nothing more than a bumbling fat bad tempered man who wants to destroy the forest because 'he hates flowers' and is not intimidating at all and is probably the worst Barbie villain I've seen so far! Violet & Ashlynn, Makena's 'friends' are just snobby, spoilt, arrogant bitches who I wanted to punch in the face! At least Makena did the only justifiable thing in the whole movie by kicking them out & realising Thumbelina was her true friend, even if it was painfully obvious from the start! Makena's parents are the kind of parents who spend too much time working, don't listen to their daughter and give her stuff to make up for it until they change at the end and realise the importance of the forest for the Twillabees with no development! This, next to the in your face story & horrid animation, is possibly the worst thing about the movie!
Overall, this is one of the worst Barbie movies I've had to sit through with a plot that just bashes morals in your head every 2 minutes with no pacing or suspense, hideous & unappealing animation & an entire cast of cliched one dimensional characters! Even if Don Bluth's Thumbelina was pretty weak with a lack of logic & boring & at times annoying characters, at least Bluth put some thought into it & the animation is frankly gorgeous! This on the other hand, is clearly an attempt to get money out of parents & to sell a load of dolls just like every Barbie film so far! And yep, I actually said that Don Bluth's Thumbelina is better than this crap!
Story: 3/10
Animation: 1/10
Characters: 2/10
Overall: 2/10
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