Animals United (originally known as Konferenz der Tiere in Germany) is a 2010 Computer Animated Comedy Adventure film that focuses on protecting the environment and wild animals. It's also based off the book The Animals' Conference. After a river dries up in Africa, Billy The meerkat (James Corden) and his friend Socrates the lion (Stephen Fry) head out to discover why, running into various other animals from across the world including a Gallic rooster (Andy Serkis), a polar bear (Erica Schroeder), a kangaroo (Jason Donovan), a Tasmanian devil and a pair of elderly Galapagos tortoises (Jim Broadbent and Vanessa Redgrave). When the group find out that human beings have built a dam and cut off their water supply, the animals become fed up with the humans and their ways and decide to band together to strike back at them and to destroy the dam. It also stars, Billie Piper, Dawn French, Joanna Lumley and Jason Griffith.
Tropes:
- Animal Gender-Bender: Toby the kangaroo has a pouch...even though he is a male kangaroo, who lack pouches.
- Advertised Extra: Ken the koala appears on some posters of the movie implying he will be a side character, but he is barely even that in the actual movie. He briefly appears with Toby before running away from the wildfire, shows up inside a truck believing Toby has died, and makes a final appearance seeing Toby again in the end credits as one of the many animals now living in New York.
- Artistic License – Biology:
- The meerkats are depicted with flat, primate-like fingernails as well as humanlike teeth, instead of the long claws and large, sharp teeth they would realistically have.
- Smiley, being blatantly based on Taz, is much too large and the wrong color for a Tasmanian devil.
- Socrates is afraid of the leopard even though lions, owning to their much larger size, can easily kill them in real life (although to be fair this leopard seems to unrealistically be about the same size as him).
- Big Bad: Mr. Smith, a hotel executive who constructs a dam for his hotel project, which blocks up a large river and stops the water from getting to the animals.
- Big Eater: Smiley, who eats a freaking ''armchair''.
- Big Sleep: Winifred and Winston. Both of them calmly lie their heads down in the grass and close their eyes before passing away together peacefully. Charles even lampshaded this.
- Brick Joke: How does Billy destroy the dam? By playing his "Hyena Poo-Poo" golf game.
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Broken Aesop: Human beings tearing up the land and invading animal territory is bad. Animals invading human territory and running amok in New York City is good. - Can-Crushing Cranium: Both Toby and Smiley use their heads to crush the cans of “water” they finish drinking.
- Category Traitor: Toto is a chimp who helps the humans with their dam project. He gets better.
- Establishing Character Moment:
- When Billy first shows up, he's supposed to be gathering water for his family. Instead, he gets distracted by a skull, forgets what he's supposed to do, and then gets sidetracked by playing with a lump of hyena dung to let the viewers know what kind of protagonist he is.
- When Smiley first appears, he roars in Toby's face, starts babbling incoherently, and then proceeds to drink a can of "water", shortly before burping and cutting a huge fart.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep":
- Hunter's real name is never mentioned.
- Also the Leopard is just...the Leopard.
- Expy:
- A lot of fans consider Billy to be one for Timon, and Socrates to be one for Simba.
- Smiley is a blatantly obvious flatulent expy of Taz the Tasmanian Devil.
- Fartillery: Later on in the movie, Smiley uses his farts to knockout some of the human beings, and even Hunter.
- Feather Fingers: Charles’ wings work more like hands he uses to gesture with. In fact, he only uses his wings to fly for barely a second in his introductory scene.
- Filler:
- After Billy and his friends finally reach the hotel on the dam, they spend the next ten minutes driving a speedboat, watching television, and going through various other shenanigans that don't advance the plot at all.
- Discussed by Bonnie in regards to Chino and Biggie's herds fighting all the time. When she blatantly asks them why they're fighting, what's their response? They don't know.
- Flat Character: One of the main criticisms about the movie is that a majority of the side characters are uninteresting or just plain forgettable.
- Frothy Mugs of Water:
- The cans of "water" that Toby and Smiley drink. It's possible that it's soda, but considering how gassy Smiley became after drinking it (and given that beer is capable of making you much more gassy than soda), it's probably beer.
- Averted at the end of the film, where Toby's friend Ken is seen drinking what is clearly beer inside of a bar.
- Gasshole: Smiley. At a few parts in a movie, he will randomly fart out MASSIVE green clouds of gas.
- Green Aesop: The main conflict is about preventing humans from using up the animals' water. A pivotal moment is Winston and Winifred giving a speech about how the Galapagos has been destroyed by pollution, and the rest of the world could be next.
- Heel–Face Turn: Toto goes from a Category Traitor helping the humans to anither animal ally after a speech from Socrates.
- Humans Are Bastards: Pretty much the point of the movie. The only human being who isn't portrayed as a hunter or a money-grubbing businessperson who destroys the land for profit is Maya.
- Humanoid Female Animal: A Downplayed example, but Billy’s wife Bonnie has slight curves despite still having meerkat proportions.
- Instant Sedation: Hunter hits Socrates with a tranquilizer dart that renders him unconscious in seconds.
- Large Ham: Charles, a French cockerel with the voice of Andy Serkis.
- Misplaced Wildlife:
- Various non-African animals show up in Africa, including a kangaroo, a Tasmanian devil, and a polar bear. Justified as they traveled from their homelands on a floating bathtub.
- Bongo doesn’t resemble any monkey species native to Botswana, in fact Wikipedia identifies him as a maroon leaf monkey… which are endemic to Indonesia.
- Smiley is depicted living in the Australian Outback, even though Tasmanian devils are, as their name suggests, endemic to Tasmania (though they did occur on mainland Australia prior to dingoes being introduced and likely wiping them out).
- Likewise, koalas are endemic to the forests of eastern Australia; Ken has absolutely no business being in the middle of the desert.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Even though Hunter manages to tranquilize Socrates and force Billy, Toby, and Smiley out of the dam’s interior, in the very next scene, he is now inside the canyon and riding a Jeep towards the dam. Considering how immediately we cut back to the animals, it just doesn’t seem possible for Hunter to show up outside the dam so quickly.
- Also in the climax, Hunter tries to scare off the animals gathering near the dam by flying his airplane. When the plane crashes thanks to Toto’s intervention, Hunter is rendered unconscious when a rock falls on his head. Somehow, he is next seen back at the resort carrying his gun with him to face the animals before Socrates stops him in his tracks.
- Paper Tiger: The leopard may present himself as a fierce predator, but he never actually engages in a fight. He easily backs down from Sushi the polar bear when she comes to save Billy and he gets told off by Charles and runs away when he tells the cat to back off.
- Redhead In Green: Maya is a young girl with bright red hair who wears a green shirt.
- See You in Hell: Chino the water buffalo says this to Biggie as their herds charge towards the dam hoping to break it with their strength.
- Talking Animal: Just about all the animals featured onscreen. Except the leopard.
- Those Two Guys:
- Toby and Smiley are rarely seen apart.
- The two Jerkass meerkats who tease Junior about how stupid his father is.
- Toilet Humour:
- Billy playing golf with hyena dung.
- Smiley. He is a HUGE Gasshole. He creates huge fart clouds four times in the movie.
- Tomboy: It's easy to mistaken Maya for a guy, given her short hair and attire.
- Uniformity Exception: Chino is the only cape buffalo in his herd with white horns. Also, Biggie the rhino has red hair, which makes him stand out from the other average looking rhinos.
- Giselle is the only giraffe with makeup and a Tuft of Head Fur.
- Angie is the only elephant with hair on her head.
- Vegetarian Carnivore: Socrates the lion is a vegetarian and a pacifist. The leopard also becomes one by the end of the film.
- Volatile Tasmanian Devil: Smiley is a Big Eater (and an Extreme Omnivore at that), a Gasshole, and an all-around nuisance to everyone. He's still one of the protagonists, though.
- You Need a Breath Mint: The Leopard. After he grabs Charles and snarls in his face, the rooster immediately knows he's a meat-eater just by smelling his "unpleasant breath."
