This sympathetic family adventure shows the exploits of various animals confronting an evil , ambitious woman and how their paths cross over under the shelter of a lively forest . There animals , trees and plants form a harmonious system . The mysterious woods resound with the conversation of the several animals and even the oaks , chestnuts, birches and willows . Then a powerful businessman wants to build a highway through the woods . One of the villlage's most nasty character , Mrs D'Abondo : Angelica Huston's voice , loves the idea and orders her hubby to cut down the trees . Everyone must flee . But Furi and the mouse Piorno and the fearful mole Cebolo don't intend to give up so easily. They'll have the help of the Clan of the Free Cats , spearheaded by the brave Tiger , and the flies , Huhu and Hoho . When they find out what Mrs D'Abondo is afraid of , Furi carries out a scheme to bring to life the Spirit of the forest with likeable trees helping them .

Nice and amusing animated movie with ecological message , dealing with a group of forest animals band together to stop a villainous woman and the exterminators from making a highway through their forest. A fun and entertaining 3D computer generator movie , though with no perfect animation , appearing a lot of incidents , as the two flies were swallowed by a cat , the spectacular final fight between Mrs D'Abondo and the rebel animals in which the villainous woman is covered in animal feces and several others . This delightful flick contains adequate voices and dubbing are provided by an international cast as Sean Astin , Ron Perlman , Anjelica Huston, Giovanni Ribisi , as well as Spanish actors as Maria Adanez , Luis Merlo . The motion picture financed by Production Companies , Dygra Films S. L. Fantastic Films International was professionally directed by David Rubin who previously wrote another animation movie : Holy Night ! . This ¨Espiritu del bosque¨(2008) had various awards and nominations , such as : Chicago International Children's Film Festival 2008 Nominee Children's Jury Award Animated Feature Film or Video David Rubin and Goya Awards 2009 Nominee Goya Best Animation Film .

Instead of writing a detailed review, I'm going to just describe the climactic battle and you can decide if you want your kids watching this. Note that the only reason this isn't entirely nightmare fuel is because the animation isn't good enough.

The blue gopher creatures decide that they are going to not leave the forest but instead "stand up to the man" (all quotes are actual quotes) so when the generic evil-lady shows up in a skintight black leather outfit wielding a chainsaw, the entire cast of forest creatures literally stands in front of her. She retaliates by attempting to slice the weakest looking gopher in half. (she misses, obviously) the second part of the climax involves all the cats jumping on the woman and biting and clawing her. The leader cat (who happens to have the most deformed looking face) Stabs his claws into her back (a loud 'thunk' is heard),but the result of this is only a scream and no apparent wounds. She grabs the leader cat and there is about half a minute of her slowly moving the chainsaw up to his neck. (the chainsaw actually does go into his neck, but that was an animation error I guess because something distracts her in the 'nick of time') The next notable scene involves two rats running up the woman's body and forcibly holding her mouth open AS THOUSANDS OF FLIES RUSH DOWN HER THROAT AND BEGIN WREAKING HAVOC ON HER INSIDES. Previously, the movie went through great lengths to illustrate exactly what hole leads to the intestines, and this is exactly where the vast majority of the flies go (never to be seen again). The remaining ones are shown slamming against the walls of the woman's stomach with enough force to cause her to violently writhe in pain.

As she spits out a few flies, the gophers launch a satchel at her. It is unclear why two main gophers had to be riding the satchel, but they did. They jumped off just in time for the woman to slice it in half with her chainsaw, thereby dumping it's contents all over her. The satchel was full of poop. The rat laughs and says something about it but the only comprehensible word in this line is "poop" The woman throws her still-running chainsaw into the air for no definite reason. it drops directly on her and the forest animals cringe. the next shot is of the chainsaw stuck in the ground and strange red stuff falling from where the woman's head should be (her neck is above the frame. It turns out this was only her hair and she is now exhausted, bald, and covered in animal feces. The two flies that are characters fly out of her mouth (alone. the 900 other flies never escape her bowels) and say in unison "leave the forest alone!" This is a movie that's more fun to describe than actually watch. What really kills this film for me is the music. It is so badly scored it makes almost every scene more uncomfortable than it has any right to be. I would probably force my friends to watch this if I could somehow get rid of the music.

I think anyone who rated this above about a 2 must have seen the cast, rented it for their kids and left the room.

My family spent the first ten minutes watching the movie trying to figure out what the blue critter was. No ears, a stubby tail, giant cheeks, and blue. Is it a graphic representation of the "spirit of the forest?" Then how come it's so clumsy and incompetent? Finally one of the characters referenced it by name, oh, it's a gopher. Nope, probably never would have figured that out.

The animation is awful, it looks like the outtakes from another movie, before the final animation layer was applied.

The dialog, or translation of it from the original language, is trite and distractingly odd. I could forgive the occasional weird comment, but the whole movie is a series of weird comments. Several scenes were nearly disgusting or curiously inappropriate, I kept thinking I was going to have to cover my kid's eyes, but then at the last minute it turned and just skirted the edge.

The characters aren't anyone I'd care about, when the two flies were swallowed by a cat, and I was so happy! I wouldn't have to endure them anymore! Unfortunately their adventures continued.

About 45 minutes into the movie my husband and I were finding it so unbearable we paused it to ask the kids if they still wanted to watch. Our 9 year old agreed she didn't like the movie but the 7 year old wanted to see what happened, for about ten more minutes, then she confessed she didn't care either. We watched to the end on x4 speed, which is how I'd recommend watching this movie.

Yes, in the English version the voices are done by a wonderful cast. But that doesn't make up for everything else this movie falls short in.