There’s a long line of ecologically themed animated feature films starting as far back as Watership Down (arguably even Bambi) through to more obviously green themed titles like ‘Ferngully The Last Forest’. The latest to join that collective is ‘Ozi Voice of the Forest’ produced by eager environmentalist and keen private jet user Leonardo DiCaprio. The story follows Ozi a young orang-utan living in the forest with her parents, pair of orange hued furry lumps that it is a surprise that least one is not voiced by Gemma Collins. But Ozi is soon separated from her parents during a forest fire that sees her rescued and taken in by an animal sanctuary where she is reared out of her trauma and becomes, what else, a tech savvy environmental influencer through her own self run social media platform on her tablet that she can’t do without. Able to use sign language for humans and yet speak English with her monkey mates she is far better suited to communicating to a wider audience than today’s self-proclaimed influencers many of whom seem unable to use a biro without getting it on their sleeves.
But Ozi finds that an app run by the Greenzat corporation are the ones responsible for the separation from her parents who sets off to find discovering them relocated in a bio-sphere along with a load of other animals ’rescued’ by the company. It’s here that the film’s message of deforestation and the evil of palm oil and the loss of the natural environment comes to the fore and its perhaps a little too much for a film aimed at such a very young audience to take in. It’s difficult to imagine a young child being carted round the supermarket on the weekly shop craving the latest additive riddled delight asking their mum to check that the ingredients don’t include palm oil.
Ozi Voice of the Forest heart is in the right place making it clear that the apes are our closest relatives a fact made only to apparent to David and Victoria Beckham whenever they look at Brooklyn. Here, Ozi is effectively simian version of Greta Thunberg, the world famous environmentalist campaigner and high profile truant. The animation is bright and breezy but like all animation studios pales beside that of Illumination and Pixar especially whose phenomenal technical achievement in recreating fur is head and furry shoulders above what is on screen here with the orang-utans seemingly flat matted fur. It does lack the nuance of detail of all Pixar animation.
Ozi is the last film to feature the vocal talents of the late great Donald Sutherland here voicing the corporation collaborating crocodile and is the stand out vocal talent amongst a cast of sidekicks that also includes a comedy baby rhino and a thieving monkey in what is a well meaning though ultimately generic film very much intended for younger children who are likely to love the vibrantly coloured animals and landscapes but whose message is likely to go over their heads.
related feature : Donald Sutherland – obituary
related feature : Fashion designer Amy Powney & director Becky Hutner chat about their enviromental documentary, Fashion Reimagined
Here’s the Ozi Voice of the Forest trailer…..
