Watership Down

I’d long heard the reputation of this movie. Scary, violent, a bunny slaughter, nothing to show your kids. I don’t think it’s reputation is quite accurate — although I wouldn’t show it to a super young child — but it’s still interesting, if simplistic. A young bunny that’s apparently a visionary or prophet sees the destruction of their warren. Bunnies flee. Bunnies look for new home, but find trouble, then flee somewhere else. When they finally find a home, they then need to find mates, and that runs them afoul of another warren presided over by a slave-driver. Bunny war happens. The end. It’s not a complex movie by any stretch, but it’s never boring. It doesn’t patronize the bunnies or try to make them cute, or anything you’d expect to see in a Disney movie. This is a struggle to survive, and it is presented in a very straight forward manner. I respect that. The art style is something that really needs to be discussed. It is sometime minimalistic and abstract, but it also contributes to the atmosphere. I was never bothered by backgrounds being barely more than line drawings and crudely painted. It somehow added to the scene, in a weird way. Basically … yeah, this was good. Not blow-away, and the ending isn’t as dark or tragic or upsetting as I’d heard, but that’s fine. It was a decent 90 minutes.