The Wild Thornberrys Movie

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The Wild Thornberrys Movie is a 2002 animated feature film based on the children's television program The Wild Thornberrys.

Plot

The film begins with Eliza, 12, playing with a cheetah family in East Africa, where her parents work as roving wildlife photographers for a television nature show. Eliza has the magical ability to talk and communicate with wild animals. The cheetah mother, Akela, has left Eliza in charge of her cubs; however, Eliza strays beyond the security of the area, and one of the cheetah cubs is kidnapped by a poacher. Eliza's persistent efforts to rescue the cub lead her British grandmother Cordelia (who is visiting them) to send her off to an English boarding school. Eliza and her older sister Debbie are both unhappy that Eliza is being sent away. Eliza is upset because she will miss out on a solar eclipse and be unable to get close to wild animals. Debbie, a materialistic "valley girl" type who dislikes Africa, is upset and envious that she is not the one being sent away to England. Darwin (Eliza's "pet" chimpanzee) smuggles himself into her luggage and ends up at school with her. Rumors about Eliza's past spread through the school, but with time, Eliza begins to become popular. Sick of being in the school she manages to persuade a snotty British school girl to lend her a visa to get out of England.

Eliza and Darwin take an airplane back to Nairobi followed by a train back to their family's site. While on the train the duo notice an injured rhino outside the train and get off to help it. Eliza speaks with the rhino who tells her about an electric fence set to kill elephants coming through a pass. Then they are assisted by a young couple, supposedly animal conservationists, and the rhino is taken away by a ranger. A night spent with the couple reveals that the two are actually the poachers planning to kill the elephants coming through the pass on the day of the eclipse. Eliza also discovers her cheetah cub friend who was kidnapped. Eliza is discovered by the poachers while she is sneaking around and they interrogate her about how she came to know about the fence.

Meanwhile, Debbie has been left alone by Mr. and Mrs. Thornberry to take care of their mischievous adopted brother Donnie near their motor home. One day Debbie ends up getting lost in the jungle trying to find Donnie. She comes to a friendly native village where no-one speaks English. After attempts to get her motorcycle out of mud fail, she runs into a teenage boy from the village who helps her to get the motorcycle out. The village members, worried that Debbie will get killed out in the wilderness, send the teenage boy as her guide. Back at the poachers' camp, as Eliza is getting her hands ,tied, the poacher tells her about the animal powers, then the other poacher hears something coming. They finally find Eliza, and Eliza and Debbie end up in a skirmish with the poachers. The teenage native boy is lost during the commotion, and to save Debbie, Eliza admits to how she got the information on the electric fence - she can speak to animals. A storm takes away Eliza's abilities to speak to animals, preventing her from apologizing to Darwin after an argument. Darwin, Donnie, Eliza, and Debbie end up on a log drifting down the river with Darwin still holding a grudge.

Debbie and Eliza talk about her powers and Debbie apologizes for some things she had done in the past to hurt Eliza. They get to the pass, just in time for the eclipse. They find hundreds of elephants, being led to death by their matriarch, unaware of the fence. Eliza jumps onto the lead elephant, and desperately tries to tell her to stop. Then she remembers how elephant mothers tell their young how to go; she taps the elephant in a certain way, causing her to stop right in front of the fence. Everyone stops, and the elephants are saved. Eliza then meets the shaman who originally gave her her powers, who returns them to her. She apologizes to Darwin, and the poachers are captured. They return to their trailer and explain to their parents what's been happening.

Cast and Crew

Cast Besides the regulars (see Wild Thornberries article), the cast also includes:

• Obba Babatunde - Boko, a native boy Debbie runs into later on
• Brenda Blethyn - Mrs. Fairgood, a teacher at the boarding school
• Rupert Everett and Marisa Tomei - Husband and wife Sloan and Bree Blackburn, wildlife conservationists, or so they say
• Lynn Redgrave - Grandma Cordelia Thornberry
• Cree Summer - Phaedra, the elephant Eliza is riding at the start of the film
• Alfre Woodard - Akela, mother of the kidnapped cub
• Melissa Greenspan - Sarah Wellington, Eliza's roommate at Madame Beatrice's.
• Tim Curry - Nigel Thornberry, Col. Radcliff Thornberry

Crew

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• Sequence Director- Mark Risley
• Sequence Director- Frank Marino

Who Talked to Eliza

• Black Rhinoceros
• Cheetah
• Gorilla
• Red Squirrel voice by John Kassir
• Horse
• Elephant

Flea Donnie

Reception

Box Office

It opened in the US box office on December 20, 2002, finished #6 for the weekend, and grossed only a modest $40 million domestically, in spite of generally favorable reviews.

Awards

It was subsequently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song for "Father and Daughter" by Paul Simon but not for Best Animated Feature.

Taglines

• This Could Be The Beginning Of A Beautiful Adventure.
• New Home. New Friends. No Powers.
• You don't need extraordinary powers to do extraordinary things.
• Go Wild!!!

Trivia

The box office failure of this film was the beginning of the end of the long, fruitful relationship between Klasky Csupo and Nickelodeon and the harbinger of the demise of Klasky Csupo.

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