Mark Reviews Movies: UNICORN WARS

Unicorn Wars, GKids

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 9, 2023

Unicorn Wars uses the aesthetic of a cartoon aimed at kids to tell a dark, violent, and twisted story. There's nothing new about the movie's presentation, then, although writer/director Alberto Vázquez and his animation team really lean into the bright and cheerful look of their central characters, an army of teddy bears that are waging a kind of holy war against unicorns in a magical forest. If not for the blood and swearing and bear genitalia in the early scenes, one might genuinely believe this is some kind of family-friendly enterprise.

It's not, obviously, and to his credit, Vázquez does eventually move away from the joke of the contradiction between the movie's appearance and its subject matter. As for whether or not that more serious and severe tone actually succeeds within the context of something that mainly functions as an easy gag, that's a different story.

The tale here revolves around those teddy bears, in training at military boot camp for a planned assault on the forest by the higher-ups. The main characters are brother bears Bluey (voice of Jon Goirizelaia) and Tubby (voice of Jaione Insausti), who have had a long-standing, albeit one-sided, sibling rivalry. Bluey is envious of the affection the brothers' mother showed to his slightly older sibling, and Tubby is kind-hearted to notice or hold a grudge when he does.

That relationship comes to form the foundation of the screenplay's later turn inward to study just how terrible Bluey is, beyond the general religious zealotry and species-based bigotry these bears have toward the unicorns. An ancient tome gives us the occasional pieces of relevant back story about the conflict, but if Vázquez is going for some parable about the natures and histories of xenophobia and war and the corruption of or within religion, his movie hits two major obstacles.

The first is the gradual focus on Bluey, who seems a Biblical sort of evil before becoming one of the political variety. That over-the-top characterization overshadows every other element, idea, or character in this tale once that progression becomes clear.

The other is the aesthetic, which is so cutesy in its depiction of the bears that it's simply a difficult hurdle for the shifting tone to overcome. Even when the movie is trying to be serious of topics such as prejudice and the consequences of violence, the bears, with their rounded features and big eyes and bright colors, remain an inherent piece of comedy. As a result, they're too much of a distraction.

Even so, Unicorn Wars isn't simply going for the cheap joke, and that quality, as well as the general sense of design and artistry on display, is to be admired. Ultimately, the move toward a character-focused study of personal, moral, and societal corruption is such an extreme turnaround that the movie's aims become lost in the shift.

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