YMMV / The Elm-Chanted Forest

• Adaptation Displacement: Not many people know that the movie is actually based on (and greatly expands upon) a short story "Painter in the Forest" by a Croatian writer Sunčana Škrinjarić.
• Awesome Music:
  • On YouTube uploads of The Elm-Chanted Forest, one of the most replayed sequences of the movie is the "Underwater Lullaby" part. It features the moon turning the croaks of the frogs into a soothing musical number.
  • The song that plays through the ending and credits is a lot more impressive than the rest of the music in the film and is surprisingly moving.
  • Sequel's most memorable song would be Czar Mrazomor's theme; synth/heavy metal "The Villain Sucks" Song that is incredibly fitting for such an intimidating villain.
• Contested Sequel: Some of those who have seen the sequel, Magician's Hat, consider it to be inferior to the original movie, one of the major criticisms being the sheer amount of musical numbers which seem to serve only to stretch out the pace of the film. Other criticisms are pointed towards some of the characters having very flat personalities; for example fairy queen Sunchica, whose only roles in the movie are to be the Damsel in Distress and Thistle's love interest. Others however find it to be a pretty solid movie, even if not quite on the same level as the original. Still others find it to be a better movie for being less saccharine, it’s more structured story that is less random, a more satisfying climax, and a superior and memorable villain.
• Cult Classic: Both movies have very unique settings and characters, but were only moderately popular back in the day.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Fifi Fox, for being a curvy vixen.
• Ho Yay: Thistle clasps his hands, bats his eyes, and refers to the emperor as "my Cactus King."
• Memetic Mutation: Modern viewers may recognize the mushroom dancers as the base for the Awesome Smiley.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Cactus King threatens Thistle with an extremely excruciating death by the use of a giant shredding machine. Not to mention the suspense of him escaping at the very last second while the creepy guards slowly approach his cell to take him to the execution chamber.
  • Although he's overall a goofy villain, the Cactus King still pulls off some Nightmare Faces that make him look like some sort of demonic Monster Clown.
  • Everytime we have an open view of the Cactus King's castle and its surrounding forest, you just know that the place is evil.
  • The Spine-Roller, a colossal automaton with fierce glowing eyes and a spike covered wheel that would be right at home in a Dark Fantasy work.
  • At the end of the mushroom song, Michael Mushroom and the three dancers suddenly grow fangs, turning them from goofy and cute to menacing.
  • The sequel:
    • Mrazomor himself. He has ice powers and a jagged, sharp appearance (with a terrifying personality to match), casually freezes his henchmen to death, plots to freeze the sun, has a deep and raspy voice, and succeeds in freezing/killing Thistle in the climax. Definitely scarier than the previous film's villain. As for how he's defeated, it's nothing less than being stabbed in the chest by Thistle's magic sword, causing him to moan in pain as he dies while the surrounding scene becomes all the more chaotic than it was before.
    • The ice witches. Needless to say, they look very creepy and menacing with a none-too-different malicious personality. The way they move is also very creepy, and their main objective is to freeze everything in sight. At one point, Kiki the little fairy decides to harass the witches, putting herself in danger (and she's a child to boot), and Sunčica tosses her back into safety before getting frozen into an ice cube herself - and the witches just laugh, backing away in a slow and scary fashion as they hold the poor incapacitated fairy queen, like horrible monsters slinking back into darkness and taking your friend with them...
• Popular with Furries: With her cute looks, graceful dance moves, and alluring French accent with a nice singing voice — and that's not even getting to there being more than a few shots focusing mostly on her fluffy tail and anthropomorphic female hindquarters — Fifi Fox has a small but dedicated following among fox furries.
• Tear Jerker: The Bittersweet Ending, while the whole forest sings ''Time and Again'' along with a couple of shots of Peter crying while leaving the forest.
• Ugly Cute: Thistle is green, stringy-haired, pouch-eyed and buck-toothed, but his general niceness and put-upon–ness make him fairly endearing.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: A very short-lived example. Thistle looks like a girl until he takes his hat off and starts talking. (Actually, even his name sounds more suited for a girl than a guy.)
  ShogunGin0: "Cripes! I thought that was a girl!"

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