Projects #049 - "These hairless primates you see behind me are part of an untamed subspecies, best known as the Thornberrys."
Eliza Thornberry gets her due!
Projects Projects
Welcome back! I beat Resident Evil Requiem so I have time to write again!
I haven’t really tried, but is my Substack searchable? What if I want to find a specific book I talked about? Should I have been tagging each issue of Projects? My Letterboxd tags prove useful when I’m bored and what to look at all the movies from 1979 I’ve seen. You can get lost in there.
Also, HOPPERS IS GOOD!!! We will discuss next time in PROJECTS ISSUE 50!!!
Watching
2025 Catchup
Twinless dir. James Sweeney
Just wanted to echo what I’ve been saying to friends - I was very impressed that this guy wrote/directed/starred in a movie where his character is THIS repulsive, desperate, and manipulative. So many gay guys are afraid to take risks in their work and come across as Satan. Not James Sweeney, apparently! Good for him! Despite how heightened it gets, I’d fully believe this would happen in Portland.
2026 Films
Scream 7 dir. Kevin Williamson (I bought a ticket for GOAT!)
A franchise already on its way out struck dead by an insane white South African (as if there were any other kind). Scream 7 is mostly turgid, with some nasty kills that feel more mean spirited than entertaining, based on what we know about the scabs behind the production. Every Scream sequel has its pros and cons, but this one is mostly con (except the Ghostface motivation, which I found pretty funny). Neve Campbell, unlike many, can actually move her face and forehead. Melissa Barrera’s wrongful firing1 was only the first miscalculation for this thing, which had… a crazy big opening. Guess most people don’t care! I anticipate a large second weekend falloff, but that isn’t stopping Scream 8 from going into production this fall. Sad! What animated kids’ movie will I buy a ticket for that time?
52 Films by 52 Women
Dead Lover (2025) dir. Grace Glowicki
It is very funny that Canada paid for both NTBTSTM and this film where Grace is a stinky gravedigger with a cockney accent who plays Frankenstein with a finger.
The Bride! (2026) dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal
I am obligated to enjoy a movie this abrasive and annoying. To a point. TO A POINT. More confounding than anything from the studios I’ve seen lately, The Bride! earns the exclamation point by making its premise ‘the ghost of Mary Shelley possesses some woman and makes her twitch through puns in a British accent’. Gobsmacked by the amount of money onscreen for what is essentially Joker: Folie à Deux if it were a road trip. Jessie Buckley better count her damn blessings that Oscar voting just ended. Christian Bale… can you please do a good movie again sometime this century?? And finally, thank you Maggie for slutting out your husband once again. Sorry that everyone is going to laugh at you and blame you for a downturn in box office. When I meet you to schedule getting knocked around by Peter, I will tell you The Bride! certainly demands to be seen.
The Ugly Stepsister (2025) dir. Emilie Blichfeldt
Should win the Best Makeup Oscar and they should let the tapeworm make the speech.
TV
Industry - Season 4 (2026)
Here’s to feeling bad all the time! Bring on the final season! Things can only get worse!
Best First Time Watches, February 2026
The Annihilation of Fish (1999) dir. Charles Burnett
The Sweet Hereafter (1997) dir. Atom Egoyan
My Dinner with Andre (1981) dir. Louis Malle
Hard Boiled (1992) dir. John Woo
Exotica (1994) dir. Atom Egoyan
Reading
Manga
Don’t tell anyone, but the only thing keeping me from doomscrolling through this new illegal forever war is a Naruto reread… I am at chapter 480 of 700. I am having a terrible time. I never understood Naruto and Sakura’s devotion to Sasuke, a boy who was literally never nice to them once. Also, (duh but), Kishimoto doesn’t just hate women, he does not think they’re people capable of a single feat! I’ll give one concession - he draws cute animals. May we never see his work again!
Videos Game
Living Dex - 1011/1025 Pokémon
Someone traded me a shiny Naganadel for a shiny Graveler? You people love shinies that bad? Do I just sound like a sucker?
Oh no! The new Pokémon! They’re coming! My quest! Doomed! Though Winds and Waves aren’t until next year, so I have time to plan… will I get to 1025 before there’s suddenly 1100? Do I need to get into shiny hunting? Stay tuned!
Hank Happenings
Caught in the act!!!
Rugrats, a History - THE WILD THORNBERRYS MOVIE (2002) dir. Cathy Malkasian & Jeff McGrath
Hey, this doesn’t have lumpy babies! Don’t stress. We’re just taking a quick safari detour into the world of the Wild Thornberrys this week, as they appear in the (bad) crossover film Rugrats Go Wild we will unfortunately have to cover soon. I always liked the show as a kid, though I couldn’t tell you many specifics the way I can for the Rugrats. Eliza is just a great character, a dorky girl whose secret ability to talk to animals gets her in trouble on all seven continents as she travels with her documentarian parents in a giant RV. What a dream life for a kid!
I’d been meaning to rewatch the movie for ages, and what better way to do it than sandwiched in the middle of our Rugrats marathon? And to my delight, I barely took notes, because this movie is TOO GOOD! The Wild Thornberrys Movie is a gorgeously animated adventure filled with perilous action, real pathos, and plenty of Tim Curry. Also, Paul Simon got a Best Original Song Oscar nom for ‘Father and Daughter’? That category is always so funny.
Eliza Thornberry (Lacey Chabert) can talk to animals, ever since a wise shaman2 gave her the gift of gab. She must keep this a secret, or she’ll lose it. Thus, she mostly spends time with her monkey friend Darwin (Tom Kane), befriending other animals around the world. During this particular adventure, the Thornberrys are in Kenya, while Nigel’s mother Cordelia (Lynn Redgrave) is visiting. Despite warnings, Eliza and her cheetah cub friends wander beyond the safe zone and are beset upon by poachers. They manage to kidnap the cub Tally, almost killing Eliza in the process. Cordelia decides enough is enough, and declares that Eliza must suffer a fate worse than death - enroll at a girls’ school in London.
This seems like a classic TV show movie folly - why take the nature girl out of nature? Mercifully, this section is not nearly as torturous or filler-y as it may seem. The other girls aren’t mean for very long, once Eliza starts telling them about her adventures. She even has some British squirrels and horses3 to talk to, a fun subversion since the Thornberrys aren’t usually in urban settings. The only real bother is Eliza’s snooty roommate Sarah, who is quickly neutralized when she realizes if she lets Eliza escape, she gets her own room. It’s a fun diversion, helping Eliza harden her resolve and giving her another trial before she’s back in Africa (pretty quickly!).
Eliza’s great foil is, of course, her older sister Debbie (Danielle Harris, aka Jamie from Halloween 4!), who has always cracked me up. Her determination to remain a normal ‘90s teen despite constantly being in the jungle is so funny. Even here, when she’s on the run from poachers, she’s still throwing out the ‘ews’ and ‘ughs’. The sisters reunite before Eliza finds the cheetah cub, putting her in a bind. She knows a lot more than she should since she’s talking to rhinos, but she can’t tell Debbie that! Unfortunately for our hero, the poachers have noticed some inconsistencies too.
Sloan and Bree (Rupert Everett and Marisa Tomei) have been posing as wildlife veterinarians, casing the joint (Kenya) to make off with the biggest score of their careers. They’ve installed an electric fence right in the path of an elephant migration hoping to cause a terrifying bloodbath and raid the sizzling corpses. But Sloan knows Eliza is lying about how much she knows, threatening to toss Debbie off a cliff if she doesn’t reveal the truth. Eliza breaks the one rule, and tells them she can talk to animals. Her gift leaves her as a giant storm rolls in, helping her and Debbie escape, but unable to communicate with Darwin or the elephants unknowingly heading to their deaths.
Mercifully, Eliza is her parents’ daughter, and knows you don’t need words to communicate with animals. She uses an old trick to get the lead elephant to turn around, saving the day. The rest of the Thornberrys unknowingly help her, stopping the poachers’ explosives and rounding them up for arrest. Eliza brings the cub home, and Shaman Mnyambo returns her gift. However, he can’t wipe Debbie’s mind, so there’s one condition - if she tells anyone, she’ll turn into a baboon. I’ve always figured the shaman and Eliza were bluffing, but Debbie certainly isn’t interested in finding out.
The Wild Thornberrys Movie is just extremely confident and exciting, something that can be shockingly hard to do with an animated movie based off a kids’ show. I’m vaguing the Hey Arnold movie here, which is just a disaster I may need to cover down the line. Unfortunately for Eliza, her next theatrical outing shoves her to the side in favor of Bruce Willis improv and Nigel doing ageplay. That’s right, we’ll be talking Rugrats Go Wild!
Sam Corner
While I don’t have quite the same storied history with The Wild Thornberrys as I do with The Rugrats, I did always enjoy the show whenever I happened to catch it. I loved the animal and environmental angle of it all, and being able to talk to animals was SUCH a dream as a kid. But while I liked the show well enough, I never actually saw the movie as a kid, so this was a first-time watch for me as an adult!
The first thing about this movie is that it is genuinely gorgeous. While all the movies we watched for this project benefited from the increased animation budget as compared to their TV counterparts, this movie truly glows. The landscapes and wildlife of Kenya are beautifully rendered, and the skies are awash with colors. We’re thrown right into this world with Eliza and her family, and after (re)introducing the main cast and setting the stage for our story (evil poachers!), the action moves to…London?
I was initially surprised that the movie for a show whose central conceit is “girl lives in the wilderness with her family and talks to animals” decided to take the girl out of the wilderness and away from the animals, but Eliza’s stint in an urban boarding school was honestly fun and worked so well. It raises the stakes—we know she needs to get back to Kenya as quickly as she can to stop the poachers—while also allowing us to see Eliza in a different environment. She finds some squirrels to talk to, the other girls at the school end up thinking she’s pretty cool4, and then she’s able to get back to the main story without this bump in the road overstaying its welcome.
Once she’s back in Kenya, Eliza is determined to rescue her baby cheetah friend from the poachers. I really love Eliza’s stubbornness and perseverance. She’s always moving, always active in her own story, using the resources she has and her own abilities (both the talking-to-animals thing and her natural talents). She’s a really great character and she’s written with such love and affection, you can’t help but root for her.
Another element of the movie that stood out to me was the relationship between Eliza and her sister, Debbie. They’re so different on the surface—Eliza is the nerdy, outdoorsy adventurer, while Debbie is a classic teen girl dropped straight out of California—but they care so deeply about each other. Eliza is willing to give up her abilities to save Debbie, and Debbie inspires Eliza when she’s at her lowest. I’m always a sucker for stories about sisters (perhaps a symptom of not having any sisters myself), and I was touched by the genuine affection they had for each other.
In the end, what makes Eliza exceptional isn’t her magic ability to talk to animals, but her courage and strength of heart that she’s always had. Always a good message! I would’ve been all about this movie as a kid, and I’m not sure why I missed it. Eliza is such a great character and it was a lot of fun to dive back into her world for a bit! The ending wraps things up neatly and allows us to get more-or-less back to the status quo of the show with one more adventure under our belt. See you next time, Eliza! Surely you’ll get a huge role in the crossover with the Rugrats, right? Right??
Please know I am defending her on the basis of her morally correct anti-Zionist, pro-Palestine stance, not her talents, of which she has none.
Real heads know that in the show, the shaman who gave Eliza her powers was a goofy slacker who screwed up and made it so she could ONLY talk to animals for a second there. I understand why the character was adjusted for the big screen.
Learning right now that these squirrels and horses were voiced by Ghostface!! Oh hey he’s also Mojo Jojo? Roger L. Jackson, you’ve done more than I thought!
I was soooo glad they avoided a simplistic “snobby rich girls all hate Eliza because she’s so different” dynamic that so much other media would’ve leaned into!