Epic Review

I have been working as a substitute school teacher for a while.

Yesterday I was at a high school and my lesson plan, assigned by the regular teacher who was ill, was to show the fairly new nature fantasy movie/video EPIC, a state of the art full-length cartoon.

The students liked it and so did I.

There is a motto stated  by "Leafman", an insect-sized hero in the movie : "Many leaves, one tree", which is a cool new way of stating one of the old spiritual ideas--we are all separate but still connected. No one is alone. And a wise old caterpillar says: "Just because you don't SEE the connection doesn't mean they're not there."

I thought this very old wisdom was presented in an easily grasped way for a new generation.

I also appreciated the advice given by the Queen of the Forest to the teen age heroine: "You get back what you give." The girl goes on to save the forest by using her father's technology which I thought was a nice touch--a teen age woman saving the natural world with technology.

This film is not everybody's cup of tea, of course, but, for its targeted teen-age audience, I thought it was carefully crafted and well done..

Everything good in our own little patch of forest after the spring rains.

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