Plot
The story opens in a forest known as Dapplewood, where "Furlings" (a term for animal children) live alongside their teacher, Cornelius (Michael Crawford). The four Furlings central to the story are Abigail (Ellen Blain), a woodmouse; Russell (Paige Gosney), a hedgehog; Edgar (Benji Gregory), a mole; and a badger named Michelle (Elisabeth Moss), who is Cornelius' niece.
One day, the Furlings go on a trip through the forest with Cornelius, where they see a road for the first time. Russell is almost run over by a careless driver, who throws away a glass bottle, which shatters in the middle of the road. Cornelius orders the Furlings to forget the road altogether. The ramble ends in a boat ride. Afterward, they go back to the forest to find out that it has been destroyed with poison gas from an overturned tanker truck that blew a tire from the broken glass bottle while transporting chlorine gas. Michelle runs to her home worried about her parents, breathing some of the gas and become severely ill. The gas inside the house has already killed both of her parents. Abigail manages to save Michelle, and the Furlings go to Cornelius' house nearby for shelter after they found their homes deserted. There, Cornelius tells the Furlings that they need to fetch two herbs that can save Michelle's life: lungwort and eyebright. With limited time, they head off for their journey the next day.
After encountering numerous dangers including a hungry barn owl, a flock of religious wrens including their reverend Phineas (Ben Vereen), and intimidating construction equipment, which the wrens call "yellow dragons", the Furlings make it to the meadow with the herbs they need. There, they meet the bully squirrel Waggs ( who insulted Michelle), and Willy, a tough but sensible mouse. After getting the eyebright, they discover that the lungwort is on a giant cliff making it inaccessible by foot. Russell suggests they use Cornelius' airship, the Flapper-Wing-a-Ma-Thing, to get to the lungwort.
The Furlings manage to get the lungwort after dangerous flight up the cliff, then steer their airship back for Dapplewood. They crash-land back in the forest after a storm, and bring the herbs to Michelle and Cornelius. A group of humans who come to clean up the gas' mess appear, the animals escape through the backdoor of Cornelius's house. Unfortunately, Edgar gets separated from the group, and (after losing his glasses), gets caught in an old trap. When one of the workers finds him, the animals are at first worried about their friend, but are surprised when he frees Edgar and smashes the trap before stuffing it in his trash bag, an act Cornelius never expected a human to do, making him realise that there are good humans in the world. After taking Cornelius to the site where they crashed, the Furlings give him the herbs to cure Michelle. However, at that time, danger increases. The humans are clearing up the mess of Dapplewood caused by the gas which was released from the tanker truck accident. Thinking that the humans were terrible (as they were in Cornelius' story about the humans and gas) and that they are the remains of the gas, the Furlings and Cornelius make an escape from them. But after Edgar gets separated and runs into a trap (which is seen as the gang went on a trip yesterday), one of the gas humans saves him and returns him back to his friends with kindness, which they accept.
The next day, she wakes up from her coma after a teardrop from her uncle fearing her to be dead. The Furlings' families and many of the other inhabitants arrive as well, except for Michelle's mother and father, who were killed in the gas accident but Corneilus promised to look after her. The Furlings happily reunite with their families, who are relieved to see that their children are alright. Michelle asks Cornelius if anything will ever be the same again. Cornelius looks at the dead trees in the forest and says to her that if everyone works as hard to save Dapplewood as the Furlings did to save Michelle, it will be. The film ends with an overhead shot of Dapplewood to show that much of the forest is still alive and that there is still hope to rebuild and make a home.
Read more about this topic: Once Upon A Forest
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)