The Wild Thornberrys Movie

The Wild Thornberrys Movie
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Cathy Malkasian Jeff McGrath
Produced by	Arlene Klasky Gabor Csupo
Written by	Kate Boutilier
Based on	The Wild Thornberrys by Arlene Klasky Gabor Csupo Steve Pepoon David Silverman Stephen Sustarsic
Starring	Lacey Chabert Danielle Harris Tim Curry Jodi Carlisle Michael "Flea" Balzary Tom Kane Lynn Redgrave Cree Summer Rupert Everett as Sloan Blackburn Marisa Tomei
Music by	Drew Neumann Paul Simon Randy Kerber (additional music)
Editing by	John Bryant
Studio	Nickelodeon Movies Klasky-Csupo Viacom Productions
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	December 20, 2002 (2002-12-20)
Running time	85 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$35 million
Box office	$60,694,737

The Wild Thornberrys Movie is a 2002 American animated feature film based on the television series of the same name. It was distributed by Paramount Pictures and produced by Klasky-Csupo and Nickelodeon Movies, and was released on December 20, 2002.

Plot

The film begins with Eliza Thornberry (voiced by Lacey Chabert), aged 12, playing with a family of cheetahs 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 (voiced by Alfre Woodard), has left Eliza in charge of her cubs; however, Eliza strays beyond the security of the area, and one of the cheetah cubs, Tally (voiced by Kimberly Brooks), is kidnapped by a poacher. Eliza's persistent efforts to rescue the cub lead her British grandmother Cordelia (voiced by Lynn Redgrave) (who is visiting them) to send her off to an English boarding school, because Cordelia believes that Eliza is constantly endangering herself in Africa and Eliza will be much safer in England. Eliza is unhappy because she will no longer be able to view the imminent solar eclipse and will not be able to locate Tally. Eliza's sister Debbie (voiced by Danielle Harris), a materialistic girl who dislikes Africa, is upset and envious that she is not the one being sent away to England. Darwin (voiced by Tom Kane), who is Eliza's "pet" chimpanzee smuggles himself into her luggage and travels to school with her. Rumors about Eliza's past spread through the school, but Eliza becomes more popular over time. However, Eliza quickly becomes fed up with the school and manages to persuade her new stuck-up British school girl room mate Sarah Wellington to lend her a visa in order to get out of England.

Eliza and Darwin catch 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 who are planning to kill the elephants which will be coming through the pass on the day of the eclipse. Eliza also discovers Tally who was kidnapped. Eliza is discovered by Sloan and Bree Blackburn (voiced by Rupert Everett and Marisa Tomei) 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 Nigel and Marianne Thornberry (voiced by Tim Curry and Jodi Carlisle) to take care of her mischievous adopted brother Donnie near their motor home. One day Debbie becomes lost in the jungle while trying to find Donnie and Eliza (the latter having stopped by the comvee with Darwin before the fateful night with Sloan and Bree). She comes to a friendly native village where no one speaks English. After several failed attempts to get her motorcycle out of the mud in which it is stuck, she meets a teenage boy from the village named Boko who helps her to get the motorcycle out. The village members, worried that Debbie will get killed out in the wilderness, send Boko as her guide. Back at the poachers camp, Sloan is tying Eliza up in the trailer and again asks how she knows about the fence. He threatens her by saying she'll never see her family again unless she tells him. Just then, Bree opens the door and tells Sloane she hears someone coming. When they go to investigate, Tally chews on the rope bounding Eliza to free her. She and Darwin get into an argument which Eliza ends by yelling at him to, for once, be quiet and Darwin's feelings are hurt. Eliza then sees Sloan grab Debbie who was the one Bree heard. Eliza rushes out of the trailer to save her, but is grabbed by Bree and held back. Eliza begs Sloane to let Debbie go, but he demands to know her source of information. Eliza says it was just a guess and let's it slip about the explosives which Sloane never mentioned. Knowing she's lying, Sloane forces Debbie over to the edge of the cliff and threatens to throw her over unless Eliza tells him the truth about how she knew about their plan. With no other way to save her sister, Eliza admits she knows about the fence because of her ability to talk to animals. A storm begins and Eliza's powers disappear. Eliza and the others got away from the poachers. Eliza pulls Tally out of the trailer and tells Darwin to go with them. Darwin, unable to understand her, just makes monkey sounds at her. Eliza realizes her power is really gone and pulls Darwin after her. The group ends up drifting down the river on a log as the storm continues.

Later on, the storm has stopped. Eliza tells Debbie the story of how she got her powers and that she had kept them a secret all this time. Debbie asks Eliza to prove it by telling Darwin how she hates it when he leaves pizza crust lying around, but Eliza tells her she can't because her powers are now gone because she revealed them and now she can't even apologize to Darwin for their argument earlier. Debbie then realizes how much Eliza's powers meant to her and is amazed that she gave it up just to save her life.

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. She uses a necklace her dad gave her before she left and hurls it at the electric fence. The fence goes off and electrocutes the necklace, and the elephants see what's going to happen. They begin to turn around but Bree and Sloane fire off another round of explosives, making the elephants charge towards it again. 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. But Sloan swings in on a helicopter and grabs Eliza. When the elephants grab onto the helicopter to help her, Eliza falls into the river as the helicopter crashes. She is then helped out of the river by the shaman who originally gave her the power to speak to animals. He tells her that she saved the day using not her powers but her heart. As a reward he gives Eliza her powers back. She apologizes to Darwin, and the poachers are captured and arrested. They return to their trailer and explain to their parents what has been happening, while Tally is reunited with his mother once again.

Cast

• Lacey Chabert as the voice of Eliza Thornberry, the main protagonist of the film
• Tim Curry as the voice of Nigel Thornberry / Col. Radcliffe Thornberry, Eliza's father
• Jodi Carlisle as the voice of Marianne Thornberry, Eliza's mother
• Danielle Harris as the voice of Debbie Thornberry, Eliza's sister
• Michael "Flea" Balzary as the voice of Donnie Thornberry
• Tom Kane as the voice of Darwin Thornberry, A chimpanzee, Eliza's best friend and pet
• Lynn Redgrave as the voice of Cordelia Jasmin McGold Thornberry
• Rupert Everett and Marisa Tomei as the voice of Sloan and Bree Blackburn, the main antagonists of the film
• Alfre Woodard as the voice of Akela, mother of the kidnapped cub
• Kimberly Brooks as the voice of Tally, one of Akela's cubs
• Cree Summer as the voice of Phaedra, the elephant Eliza is riding at the start of the film
• Brenda Blethyn as the voice of Mrs. Fairgood, a teacher at the boarding school
• Obba Babatundé as the voice of Boko, a native boy Debbie runs into later on
• Kevin Michael Richardson as the voice of Shaman Mnyambo
• Melissa Greenspan as the voice of Sarah Wellington, Eliza's roommate at Lady Beatrice's
• Tara Strong, Hynden Walch, and Mae Whitman as the voice of schoolgirls
• Roger L. Jackson as the voice of Reggie (an English squirrel) and Thunder (a Clydesdale)
• Johnny Kassir and Charles Shaughnessy as the voice of Squirrels

Reception

Box office

It opened in the US box office on December 20, 2002, and only finished #6 for the weekend, with only $6,013,847 for 3,012 theaters for an average of only $1,997 per venue. The film ended up with a modest $40,108,697 domestically, partly because the film came out on the same day as The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. But, in light of generally favorable reviews it managed to out-gross its holiday animated competition Treasure Planet and Eight Crazy Nights.

Critical response

Reviews were mostly positive. It currently holds a 80% "Certified Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes (making it the best-ranked Nickelodeon Movie on the site until The Spiderwick Chronicles and more recently Rango took over with 80% and 89% freshness respectively) and a rating of 69 (meaning generally favorable reviews) on Metacritic. A parody featured on a movie poster in an episode of The Simpsons called 'The Wild Dingleberries Movie.'

Awards

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song for "Father and Daughter" by Paul Simon.

Soundtrack

The Wild Thornberrys Movie Soundtrack
Soundtrack album by Various Artists
Released	November 26, 2002
Genre	Soundtrack
Label	Jive Records/Nick Records
Professional reviews
The reviews parameter has been deprecated. Please move reviews into the “Reception” section of the article. See Moving reviews into article space. Allmusic link

The original motion picture soundtrack was released on November 26, 2002 from Jive Records.

Track listing

1. "Father & Daughter" - Paul Simon
2. "Iwoya" - Angelique Kidjo featuring Dave Matthews
3. "Dance With Us" - P. Diddy & Brandy featuring Bow Wow
4. "Animal Nation" - Peter Gabriel
5. "Happy" - Sita
6. "Motla Le Pula (The Rain Maker)" - Hugh Masekela
7. "Don't Walk Away" - Youssou N' Dour featuring Sting
8. "Acci-dent" - Baha Men
9. "Monkey Man" - Reel Big Fish (a cover of the original Toots and The Maytals song of the same name)
10. "Shaking The Tree (02 Remix)" - Peter Gabriel & Youssou N' Dour featuring Shaggy
11. "Get Out Of London" - The Pretenders
12. "Africa" - Las Hijas Del Sol
13. "End Of Forever" - Nick Carter
14. "Awa Awa" - Wes

Score

The Wild Thorneberrys Movie Original Motion Picture Score
Soundtrack album by Drew Newman
Released	April 8, 2003
Genre	Soundtrack
Label	Silverline Records/Nick Records

The original motion picture score was released on April 8, 2003 from Silverline Records and includes the theme song Bridge To The Stars. The album is currently out of print.

Track listing

1. "Bridge To The Stars" - Randy Kerber and J. Peter Robinson
2. The Wild Thorneberrys Movie Theme
3. Poachers Get Tally
4. Photo Album / Elephant Legend
5. Darwin's Adventures In London
6. Stampede
7. A Rainy British Eve
8. Spooky Story
9. Like A Caged Teen
10. The Poachers Strike Again
11. Debbie Meets Boko
12. A Race Against Time
13. Eliza Loses Her Powers
14. Sneaky Mission
15. Eliza Saves The Elephants

External links

• The Wild Thornberrys Movie at the Internet Movie Database