The Last Unicorn

Hold on to your butts (five points if you can name from what movie that phrase is), because I have a slew of book reviews coming! I'm not necessarily reading them or posting the reviews in the order in which I read the books, so we'll see how much longer I can put off The Portrait of a Lady and Corelli's Mandolin. Seriously, I have no idea why I'm procrastinating on those reviews!

Last month, I mentioned an interesting tradition which I've developed over the past few years: watching The Last Unicorn on the Ides of March. The movie isn't that well known (although it is still a big hit in Germany and apparently the television stations play it on Christmas Eve and Christmas...even though the book has absolutely nothing to do with the season), and honestly if you didn't watch it as a child, you probably wouldn't like it as an adult. But it's got a lot of nostalgic quality for me, and so I continue to pop the movie into the DVD player every now and then. It wasn't until this year that I realized the movie is based on a book by the same individual who wrote the screenplay. How I never noticed this fact beats me, but I thought it was decidedly time for me to do something about this catastrophe and read the darn book.

The Last Unicorn is the story of one unicorn, which is in fact the last unicorn left in the world. She hears rumors of the Red Bull who chased down all the other unicorns many years ago and "covered their footprints behind them" and determines she must find out what happened to the other unicorns. She leaves her forest, and her journey begins. Along the way, she faces many challenges and dangers, but is helped along by two traveling companions who join her at different points. They eventually learn that King Haggard keeps the Bull (or the Bull keeps Haggard- no one is sure which is correct) and continue on to his castle in order to learn the truth and to save the rest of the unicorns. But once they reach King Haggard's land, the Red Bull senses the unicorn's presence and begins to chase her...until one of the unicorn's traveling companions (a fairly lousy magician) does the only thing he can do to save the unicorn from the Red Bull: he changes her into something she is not (won't share the specific form so not to ruin the story). Her new form only adds to the complexities of the plot, as the unicorn is not completely sure who she is in this new form.

The book itself is pretty short, and there are definitely some slow parts in it. Because I had seen the movie before reading the book, I had a mental image of what all the characters should look like. I have to say that for the most part, the animation in the movie did a nice job capturing the qualities of the different characters. Interestingly enough, Beagle left out some pretty sizable chunks and sub-plots with the screenplay (time constraints, possibly). Over all, it would be a good book to read aloud to most children, but be careful with the movie; there are definitely some very scary parts!