(Watch along here
. Not recommended by doctors.)
Fade in on Cree flying. A shrieking synth note plays in the background— it sounds like something a child would come up with if they were fooling around on their mom’s electric piano. If they were three. And deaf.
Cree surveys the damage. The rocky desert landscape has turned into… a rocky desert landscape. Apparently volcanic eruptions don’t leave behind mounds of ash or blackened rocks, they just turn everything into Arizona. Yuuuuup.
“What a mess!” cries Cree. “Why doesn’t anyone clean it up?” I can’t tell if that’s a joke in poor taste, gallows humour, or general stupidity, but knowing Dingo Pictures, I vote the latter.
“Cree, where are you, what’s happening?” says Tio, whose back is to the audience so the animators don’t have to animate his mouth. He’s still in the cave, and Cree descends with a goofy-looking expression. “Cree, can we come out?” Oh Tio, everyone already knows anyway. “Is there anything to eat out there? Is the ground still hot?”
“Slowly, slowly,” says Cree, “one thing at a time. Firsting (first thing?), the ground is only slightly hot and you can almost breathe normally, but that’s about all. Yeah.” Yeah. Dude, take care of that nervous tick of yours— it‘s so annoying I can barely be annoyed by everything else here. Also, didn’t the Sexy Duck Narrator just say they could breathe again? Why are you contradicting what the SDN said not five seconds ago? Don’t you have any internal consistency, movie? So Tio, Cree, and the nameless crocodiles walk out of the cave. I guess we’ll never find out what Cree’ “second thing” was.
The land looks a bit darker than when Cree was flying, and the sky and some of the mountains are red. If this volcano was big enough to tint the sky, why would Oro think they’d have enough time to flee in just a few days? Even with the time to escape, they'd still be suffering the after-effects of the volcano. This movie's plot holes could fill the Grand Canyon— which is fitting, I guess.
Arizona.
“Nothing is like it was,” says Tio, “look, everything’s destroyed!” Nonsense, it’s still the same; they just painted over the old B Gs. “Where are trees and the ferns? There’s nothing left to eeeeat!”
PASS a crocodile crying. Snerk. I guess those are… No, no, I won’t say it. It’s too easy. … oh what the hell: Crocodile tears! Bwahahahahahahahahahaha!
So everyone is crying in the fakest way imaginable, which I must say is laugh out loud funny. Cree spoils my fun by saying, “Oh come on, stop cryyyying, what am I to doooooo?”
“I’m sure they’re all dead,” exclaims Tio. Gotta love these non-sequiturs. “Creeeeeee. We’re all alone in the world!” No one can judge our love now!
Tio and Cree spend some time whining about the loss of everything they ever knew. “Over there! That’s where I always slept,” says Tio, pointing to some piece of land just off screen.
“Nyah I was born on that tree over there,” says Cree, and we cut to a shot of a tree stump. The first thought that comes to mind is, that’s the place you didn’t want to take Tio to? It’s only five feet from his house! Why wouldn't you want to take him there— he's already seen it anyway!
And my second thought is, if the volcano burned down the tree, it shouldn’t be a stump it should be an unrecognizable pile of ash. Aaaaaargh,
“If only we’d listened to Oro,” whines Tio. You’ll forgive me if instead of feeling pity, I LAUGH HEARTILY.
“If, if, IF, always if, well we DIDN’T!” Cree must hate ifs. “And if (guess not) we had we couldn’t have stopped it.”
“Stoopppped it,” says Oro, who appears right the fuck outta nowhere. He still sounds as goatey and senile as ever. “(Deep breath) But we could have got away in time to look for a new home!” I doubt it, Oro— you had like, a day to leave. That’s not really enough time to evacuate everyone and get to safety and find a new, cool home.
“ORO!” cries Tio, “you’re alive, where are the others?” What, you’re not even going to ask how he survived? 'Cause I for one would like to know.
“I don’t know,” says Oro. “But when I look at all this oh, ooooohh….” Something about those last two “oh”s makes me think Oro has a fetish for volcanic eruptions and post-apocalyptic desert wastelands. He must have loved Tank Girl.
“Do you mean, do you mean my parents are dead?” My parents are DEAD! Hooray!
“Who could say?” says wise old Oro. “I hope they could flee in time.” I hope they could learn to use an English sentence.
“And you?” says Cree. “What are you still doing here?” Jeez, Cree, there are nicer ways of asking a person how they survived. “What are you still doing here?” has to be in the bottom three.
“When my machine got wider I went away and hid in a cave until noOW.”
“Then,” says Tio, his eyebrows waggling in fury, “you just left the others in a lurch?! Is that what you DID?” Dude, he tried to warn them— you were fucking there. And you all laughed at him. Granted, he’s terrible at explaining things, but…
BWAH ORO Jeeez. I have not missed those close-ups of Oro’s wrinkly snake head, that’s for sure. “NOOOoooooo I didn’t, I just a couple of hours before eruption I went and warned them.” I bet that worked spectacularly. Did you use the same technique as last time? The tried-and-tru(ly terrible) ‘I‘m right because one day we’ll all FLY!’ method? “But they just argued whether or not they should believe me so I—”
Interruption from the green rat! “We have to go look for them! They may still be alive!” “Tio’s right!” says Cree. “We can’t stay here anyway, so we might as well start looking!” Yay, plot!
Cut to the crocs. “We would LOVE to help you look, but we have to find water urgently.” Crocodiles need water at least once every seven days, otherwise they explode. Trufax.
The crocs leave, amid ominous jungle music. Not quite the OMINOUS MIDI BONGOS, but it’ll do.
I’m so glad we had the crocodiles in this movie, their presence was so necessary and worthwhile. The plot really wouldn’t make sense without them— they were totally not superfluous to everything that has happened since their introduction. Truly, they are a set of wonderful, rounded characters. I’m sure we’ll see them again.
So Cree, Tio, and Oro decide to start looking for the others. Tio wants to use Oro’s machine, because he’s an idiot. Oro admits they’ll have to use an “unscientific approach,” namely— drawing straws!
Drawing straws to find people. I don’t even know how that works.
Oro assigns a cardinal direction to each straw; which one they pick, that’s the direction they’re go exploring. Why not just pick a direction and go?
Cree chooses. Using his beak, he picks the longest straw.
“It’s the longest,” says Tio.
“West,” says Cree.
“West,” says Oro.
“Padding,” says Ronka.
Cree takes flight, and Oro and Tio start walking. The epic journey has begun. Fade out.
