I think I owe an apology to John Hughes. Either that or someone out there sure does. It's probably the fault of someone in the long since defunct arm of of 20th Century Fox's VHS promotions department. Whoever is responsible for the faux pas, it's thanks to their unthinking efforts that a lot of 80s an 90s kids such as myself first grew up hearing of this film as a Coming Attractions adjunct to the otherwise unblemished awesomeness that is
Home Alone. That's how I remember first learning there was ever such as
Ferngully drifting around out there. Maybe I should back up and explain a bit. See, back in my day, we didn't have none of this here Streaming Services and DVDS. No sir, in my day we had nothing but good old analog equipment to go on, and somehow we managed to enjoy it. If it explains anything, then I guess its that when it comes to entertainment, human beings are more adaptable than we think we are. As long as its in the service of a good to fairly decent show, then we're willing to overlook any and all technical limitations past a certain point. That's how it was for us in the X and Y generations, anyway.
When I was still a kid it meant that sometimes anything you learned about the latest movie releases came from just two sources. The primary one was the commercials on the family television set. The second was the preview segments that most videotape cassettes came with from roughly the mid-80s to around 1997. Those were the glory years of VHS, and while it was smooth sailing for the most, part, sometimes watching those old analog Coming Attraction segments could make for either some interesting to jarring tonal contrasts or combinations. The way I first learned about the existence of Ferngully is a good case in point.
I never learned about this now somewhat notorious piece of kid's fare from a movie theater. Instead, as I've hinted above, the way it all came about was through a simple sequence of events. John Hughes and Christopher Columbus created
Home Alone in 1990, and it became an instant pop culture touchstone. My Mom and Dad came to me raving about it. I was about Kevin's age back then, so at least I have a sort of excuse (however poor) for having missed out on its initial theatrical impact (okay, I'm a complete idiot,
I get it!). Then the film's first home media release comes in the form of a VHS package I'm sure most of us remember from our childhoods. I pop the cassette into the VCR (ask your parents), the film starts, I come to understand just what everyone is talking about, and come away with a richer sense of understanding from the experience. Just before the film began, however, I was treated to a series of promos courtesy of Fox Video. One of them was a very ironic promo from American Airlines, which declared that they were "proud to be a partner in the video release of
Home Alone." The commercial goes on to say that "American salutes the many families that have made American Airlines something special in the air." I guess the company must have been not too smart then as now, because if there's one thing Hughes' film doesn't do, its paint a flattering portrait of the airport industry. You could make a whole nightmare comedy of errors scenario about the McCallisters just trying to get on the plane.
The other commercial is a second sponsor, Pepsi Cola. It's dated in many ways, and even teaches a bad lesson to kids if you stop and think about it. It showcases a pair of friends going on about how you shouldn't let others judge you based on the way you dress or carry yourself, much less what kind of soft drink you enjoy. Then a girl comes up and asks one of the kids, "You got a Pepsi for me?" The entire point is not so much thwarted as bulldozed over and forgotten about as one of the kids who was going on about being yourself becomes a total sellout for The Pepsi Generation. All his friend can do is observe and say, "Who knew?" Yeah, well I for one know there is a whole world of wrong going on in a commercial which tries to peddle its product under the banner of "Just Be Yourself" in a way which turns a good idea into the worst sort of lie. There's a hell of a cautionary tale in all of that somewhere. However, it's the third commercial I'm here to talk about. It also comes first in chronological order, and I think my 8 year old self knew that something was up with what I was seeing; I just didn't have the vocabulary or conceptual base of knowledge necessary to tell what seemed so strange to me back then
With the passage of time, what makes this slate of commercials so jarring to a modern audience is a combination of just how tone deaf they all are to the content and point of the movie they were meant to lead into, and that's where part of the cognitive dissonance stems from. I mean two of them are trying to tout their products with a straight face right before a film which spends most of its runtime dismantling the cheap sloganeering of its time period. So I guess there's an accidental sense of the joke being on the sponsors, and they don't even know it. What made the
Ferngully commercial stand out to me even back then seems to have been the nascent knowledge that I was looking at two stories that didn't have any reason to be lumped together. One of them is just a simple animated film with strong Disney or Don Bluth overtones in its DNA. The film its leading into, by contrast, proves to be sophisticated enough to qualify as perhaps the last great Brat Pack film in John Hughes' career. While it's true the main protagonist is a pre-teen, it's also very clear that Kevin spends the majority of the film's runtime grappling with the same set of ideas that the Breakfast Club struggles with in their own story. It's just that now its all being seen through the eyes of a little kid. What's interesting about his iteration of this same setup is that he manages to not let it all drag him down to the same kind of low point like Bender and his newfound friends have to put up with, Instead, he's more prepared by the end. You get the sense that this kid will grow up more ready to face the challenges of adulthood.
It's pretty heavy stuff for a Holiday flick, yet it's the primary reason people still remember Home Alone fondly after all these years. It's because it speaks to universal struggles that most of us have to deal with in coming of age, and realizing that maybe there's no such thing as a true grown up, and that we have to determine how be our truly authentic selves in a way that doesn't get bought and sold by the rat race of life. Before all that, though, here's a brief clip of Robin Williams as a crazy fruit bat in an unknown Don Bluth knock-off! So yeah, the cognitive dissonance was strong with this one. Having the Ferngully commercial come on just before the movie started was enough to create this strange dichotomy in my mind. On the one hand, it made the film I was watching out to be no different than your standard Mouse House oriented film. On the other hand, it's clear Hughes was dealing with far more mature themes than any of the people in Fox's marketing division were aware of. In practical terms, it means I was allowed to watch a disconnect between the studio advertisers and the artists take place in a manner that's kind of informative in a strange way. It showcases how some people can misread a story as opposed to the more knowing intelligence of the audience. On a further level, the whole experience was just curious enough to get me thinking about what kind of film Ferngully was in its own right. I got a chance to answer that question for myself later on in elementary school.
It was during my pre-teen school days that I first got a chance to see the film on its own terms. My schoolteachers would sometimes trot out a TV hooked up to a VCR to show their young charges (of which I used to be one) during any slow periods when there was a gap in their daily curriculum. It's how I got a chance to see the movie presented in its own terms. At the time, I remember not minding it all that much, yet it was difficult to tell just what (if
any) sort of an impact it left on me. I know it must have reminded me a bit of the kind of film's Bluth was famous for. There were moments when it felt like it was at least trying to reach for that same vibe. And to be fair, it kept me interested. However I don't recall it making all that big of an impact on me. Instead, from what I can remember, the final takeaway is probably best described as one of those middle of the road experiences. It wasn't great, yet I suppose I was in a generous enough frame of mind to not call it bad. And to be fair, some bits and pieces of it would emerge on occasion from my memory. It never happened often; not to the extent of
An American Tail, for instance. That's a movie I still recall watching as child with jaw agape in an awestruck frame of mind that existed somewhere between terror and wonder. It remains perhaps the key shaping event of my filmgoing life. I don't recall
Ferngully giving me anywhere near the same vibes. And yet it managed to stick around in my mind, so I decided to go back and see why that is.
