“You want me to put an APB out for a unicorn.”

Justin’s rating: UNOcorn is about to slap down a Wild Draw Four on you.

Justin’s review: I didn’t think I’d ever have to give an official stance on unicorns, but I suppose this is the time. I’m not the hugest fan, but I’m not the world’s biggest unicorn hater? That’s what I’m going with. When I was a kid, I knew that Lisa Frank and her ilk solely marketed unicorns to girls, so I hardly ever read a book or saw a movie with them, save for CS Lewis’ The Last Battle. And I haven’t gone out of my way to change this streak as an adult, either. About the only cool unicorn scene I’ve ever watched is the brief cameo in Cabin in the Woods when one skewers a soldier.

I mean, if you’re going to die, having “gored by a unicorn” on your grave is pretty metal.

I guess I can understand the appeal of these creatures. It’s like giving horse lovers an extra-special magical horse that only they — the pure in heart and virginal in soul — can see. Narwhales feel a little put out that they’re not as idolized despite being real, but that’s what you get when you live 2,000 kilometers from the nearest McDonald’s.

Weirdly enough, The Little Unicorn is the second South African fantasy movie from 2001 that I’ve reviewed in the past year — along with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice — and it’s about the same baffling assortment of notable actors coupled with a cheesy, unbelievable plot. Here we have George Hamilton and David Warner moving into that phase of their life where nobody was calling except these dubious out-of-country productions that paid in cases of Ensure.

On the evening that a family’s horse is dying in childbirth, a girl makes an bizarre wish that a unicorn would show up to make everything right. Well, the horse still dies (spoiler!) but not before it gives birth to a horrible atrocity of a CGI unicorn. That monkey paw always has a trick up its non-existent sleeve, does it not?

The CGI unicorn quickly grows up (because it’s easier to glue a horn onto a real horse) and demonstrates remote healing powers. But instead of being a marvelous blessing to the world, the unicorn ends up at the middle of a crazy circus. I mean that literally — a circus owner gets crazy obsessed about kidnapping the beast and sends his carnies to do his bidding.

It’s not every day that an entire circus’ worth of freaks and geeks make up the bad guys of the movie. And it’s this novelty, rather than the unicorn itself, that intrigued me until I saw that it was just an excuse to have little people and trapeze artists and strong men fall over and get into compromising positions.

There are other interested parties trying for some uni-napping, including a magician (Hamilton) who wants the horn for its spells and a couple of middle-aged women whose motivation escaped me. Maybe they want it for a book club centerpiece.

So as this whole town wants to capture and/or exploit the unicorn, a couple of kids do what they can to run interference and save this precious being. I figure they have a deal to sell it on the black market and fund their college educations in one fell swoop.

You know what doesn’t do that much in this movie deceivingly called The Little Unicorn? The beast itself. The unicorn just glows, occasionally dips its head so that magic(tm) lightning can do stuff, and is an object of obsession. It’s not a character — it’s a MacGuffin. So no, this film didn’t revolutionize my appreciation for unicorn culture.

The Little Unicorn is another effort by the team that made the equally terrible Fairy King of Ar. In addition to the fantasy elements, both share nonsensical plot turns, terrible pseudo-British acting, child audience pandering, and far too much slapstick with far too little comedy. There really is nothing quite as painful to watch as people trying and failing to be funny.

Intermission!

• “Big Mick” is an actual actor’s name here
• Haha she goes down fast after a soccer ball to the head
• Hey kids, let’s watch a movie where a horse dies in childbirth!
• “Do horses go to heaven?”
• When a horse dies, you put a blanket over their head
• That is the worst CGI unicorn I’ve ever seen
• Yes, let’s get mad that the unicorn didn’t show up in time to save a horse
• “Whiskey or not, I saw a unicorn tonight!”
• That is a serious old fashioned flashbulb camera
• It’s really hard to hypnotize a unicorn into falling asleep
• Spike the unicorn?
• Crowds of people have no problem tromping through the woods to mob a unicorn
• That house’s door is four feet high at most
• Time to make a fake unicorn! Wait, did the real unicorn help to transform the horse into a good lookalike?