The Wind in the Willows is a 1983 Stop Motion Animated Adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's classic novel. Produced by Cosgrove Hall Films for Thames Television, it was first aired on ITV in Great Britain on the 27th of December 1983. Internationally, it was released in cinemas, distributed by The Cannon Group in North America and by Communications and Entertainment Limited (CEL) in Oceania. It was well-received by critics and audiences alike, which resulted in it getting a television series by Thames Television and a sequel, the latter of the two this time focusing on Mr. Toad.
Followed by A Tale of Two Toads and Oh, Mr. Toad.
The film provides examples of the following tropes:
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: The book ends with Toad holding a banquet at Toad Hall where he actually behaves quietly and humbly and compensating those he wronged. The film ends on a much more comedic note with Toad flying (and later crashing) an aeroplane.
- Adaptational Badass: Badger, while always a stonecold but friendly badass, in this version fights the weasels with his bare hands. He brings his blunderbuss only for a warning shot. When the weasels take over Toad Hall, instead of simply overpowering him, they have to sneak up and hit him from behind with a cudgel.
- Adaptational Villainy: In the novel, the weasels are cowards who run and only appear in the third act. Here they have a greater presence, and manipulate, steal from, menace, and even attack whoever they can. In a case of Adaptational Badass as well, they stand and fight when the main characters come to take Toad Hall back. Also unlike their book counterparts they aren't "tamed" since in the subsequent TV show they make regular attempts to either kidnap Toad for ransom or con him out of Toad Hall (though they get the occasional Pet the Dog moment).
- Adaptational Wimp: Toad, very very much. He doesn't even fight the chief like in the book, he just hangs on the chandelier and falls on him.
- Adaptation Expansion: After the film was a four season TV show and another film.
- Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: It is not shown how Toad escaped from his bedroom.
- Adapted Out: The character Otter, and the chapters "The Further Adventures of Toad", "Wayfarers All" and "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" were all left out of the film, but subverted by the TV series in which Otter is a recurring character and all three chapters were adapted as episodes
- Animated Adaptation: Of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.
- Boisterous Weakling: Toad constantly compliments himself on abilities he does not have.
- Bookends: The film starts with the opening of a brown leather-bound book and ends with the book closing at the end of the credits.
- Catchphrase:
- Mole: 'Bother and blow'. 'Oh my!'.
- Rat: 'Oh no!' 'Great Heavens!'.
- Badger: 'As my dear father used to say...' after quoting a proverb or saying.
- Mr. Toad: 'Poop-poop'. 'Hello you fellows!'. 'Hahaha!'. 'It's the only thing!'. In the TV series, he also frequently boasts of buying 'the finest <product> that money can buy' to aid his latest craze.
- Bill Weasel: ... Or I'll skin ya!
- Bert Weasel: Very niiiiiice!
- Chandelier Swing: Parodied when Toad spends the battle at Toad Hall swinging uselessly back and forth on the chandelier, until he falls on top of the last weasel standing.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The engine driver who helps Toad escape is first seen during the motorcar montage.
- Cool Car: Toad's motorcars. Too bad he wrecks them.
- Cool Old Guy: Badger starts to be seen as this the more the audience gets to know him
- Crazy-Prepared: Rat always plans ahead for a picnic.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Most, if not all, of the animal characters fall into this.
- Dramatic Drop: Mole drops a wine glass upon learning from the youngsters that Toad has been arrested.
- Drives Like Crazy: There is a spectacular montage of Toad's motor car accidents, proving that cars are his worst mania yet.
- Felony Misdemeanor: Much like the novel and all other adaptations, Toad's sentence. Twelve months for the theft of a motor car, three years for dangerous driving, and fifteen years for cheeking the police. Unlike the source material and other versions however, this film adds a cherry on the top by stating the extra year added on to make it a twenty year sentence was because Toad was 'green'.Clerk: That adds up to...
Judge: Nineteen years!
Toad (in disbelief): Nineteen years?!
Judge: And another year for being green. Twenty years! - Forbidden Zone: It is not advised to go to the Wild Wood, at least not on your own.
- Gender Flip: The judge is female in this version.
- Gilligan Cut: Rat objects to accompanying Toad on his caravan trip, confidently assuming that Mole will agree. Mole does…but then admits it could be fun. As “The Open Road” begins to play, we get a close up of Rat, arms folded, looking peeved.
- Here We Go Again!: Toad learns nothing from his motorcar disaster and takes up a new fad—the airplane.
- He's Back!:
- Toad sees his jailbreak as this and displays it as such through singing.
- At the Battle of Toad Hall, in a Moment of Awesome, the Chief Weasel is surprised to see that Toad is out of gaol.
- I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Toad tricks Reggie out of his car to steal it by lying that his own car has "a flat crankshaft."
- Impostor Forgot One Detail: Toad disguises himself as a washerwoman with the help of the jailer’s daughter. As he’s leaving, the jailer bids him goodnight, and he refers to the jailer as “Old Chap”. The washerwoman is well known throughout the prison, and would know everyone’s names. The jailer instantly notices the inconsistency and sounds the alarm that Toad has escaped.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: Rat, upon hearing that Moley has gone off to the Wild Wood to find Badger despite his warnings, drops his carefree and relaxed demeanor, arming himself with two flintlocks and a shillelagh before hurrying off after him.
- Manchild: David Jason explained in interviews that he played Toad this way, allowing him to be likable despite his wild irresponsibility.
- Movie Bonus Song: The film includes all the songs from the book, though "The Open Road" was written exclusively for the film.
- Pilot Movie: The film was described as the "pilot" episode which launched the TV series.
- Premature Eulogy: When Toad hears that the weasels were "too strong for Badger," he is stunned and begins to tearfully eulogize Badger... before Badger shows up behind him to tell him not to.
- Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Toad's character in a nutshell.
- Scenery Porn: All the background settings are gorgeous and given lavish attention to detail.
- Shoo Out the Clowns: Toad disappears when Mole tries to visit Badger in the Wild Wood, arguably the scariest sequence in the movie.
- Shout-Out: The film begins and ends respectively with the opening and closing of a book in live-action footage.
- The book even has the logo of The Cannon Group on the front, and the Cosgrove Hall logo on the back. (This fact however only applies to North American releases. In European and Australian ones, the book has a Celtic and floral pattern on both covers.)
- Tempting Fate: Rat initially believes that Toad's motor car mania will be a passing phase just like all of his other hobbies were.Mole: I really am worried about Toad.
Rat: Oh, it's just another one of his passions. He'll grow out of it.
Toad (in the distance): POOP-POOP!
Mole and Rat both look up nervously
Rat: I hope. - This Is Gonna Suck: In the ending, Toad's plane starts to break down. Rat utters his familiar "Oh, no", Badger resignedly grumbles and Mole meekly says, "Oh, dear".
- Truer to the Text: This is one of the most faithful adaptations, not only telling the story of the book, but also capturing the tone and feel. The chapters and events the film didn't include where adapted as episodes of the series.
- Verbal Tic: Whenever Badger is annoyed at something, or someone in Toad's case, expect him to growl in irritation.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Or, more accurately, as Reggie inquired:Reggie: I say, old bean. Where's my car?note
The TV series provides examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny:
- "Patient: Toad" has Badger discover that Toad's supposed illnesses - armillaria mellea, botrytis and ranunculus repens - are plant ailmentsnote . While amused by Toad's foolishness, Badger has to stifle his laughter in front of the grief-stricken Mole and Rat to avoid hurting their feelings.
- "Auberon's Return" has Toad, upon realizing that the main character of Auberon's new play "Oh, Jeremy!" is based on himself, laugh along with the others, who'd caught on much earlier.
- Adaptational Heroism: Toad didn't appear in the book's "Wayfarers All". In the TV episode, he assists Mole in trying to stop Rat from leaving.
- Adaptational Villainy: While the weasels were nasty pieces of work in the film, the TV series ups their antics to such things as robbing children, committing stock fraud and setting dangerous spring-loaded traps as petty revenge.
- Adaptation Expansion: Three episodes are adapted from chapters of the book not covered in the film - "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", "Wayfarers All" and "The Further Adventures of Toad". Each one gets additional story material and scenes added to the original plot.
- Ascended Extra: Billy Rabbit first appears as an unnamed character in "The Grand Annual Show" and becomes more of a recurring character from season three onwards.
- Bear Trap: One of these plays a pivotal part of the episode "The Weasels' Trap", in which the Chief Weasel seeks to use it to seek revenge on Badger.
- Big Eater:
- Toad, period. Going on an hour's journey, in his opinion, requires equipping oneself with several sandwiches, a cake or two, a few packets of biscuits, a tin or two of soup, etc, etc.
Rat: You had three cheese sandwiches and a cream cake half an hour ago, Toad!
Toad: Half an hour? No wonder I feel peckish!- Mole himself is often noted as a bit of a gourmand, which explains his tubbiness. Oddly, Toad is much skinnier despite being the bigger eater of the two.
- Butt-Monkey: Averted. Nearly every misfortune Toad suffers is his own doing, the result entirely of his impatience, self-satisfied impulsiveness, and daydreaming or self-delusion and his lifetime of Ignored Aesop after Ignored Aesop. The few times he acts reasonably, things nearly always go well for him.
- Christmas Episode: "The Yuletide Entertainment" and "Tunnels and Tremors". "Fancy Dress" takes place just after Christmas, but clearly before Twelfth Night as Christmas decorations are still in place at Toad Hall.
- City Mouse: Mole's playwright cousin Auberon comes from London. His first visit has him happy to spend time in a countryside house.
- Community-Threatening Construction: A season-long arc about a railway being built through the forest most of the animals called home. Luckily the ground is unstable because of the tunnels made by Badger's ancestors, so it's abandoned.
- Deadpan Snarker: Rat is given this attribute, but is often more jovial than most examples. Badger also has his moments, especially towards Toad.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Badger confronting the Stranger in "Unlikely Allies", who is implied at the end to be Satan himself. The Stranger immediately decides to move on.Badger: Work your evil, I'm sure you will. But not here! Not yet!
- Dude, Not Funny!: "Toad In Love" has Badger, Mole, and Rat telling Toad the truth about the actress he's fallen in love with. Rat gives Toad some lip about it, but while the others would've laughed at this in other episodes, they don't this time. Mole chides Rat for joking about it while Badger gives him a stern look, to which Rat sincerely apologizes to Toad.
- Even Evil Has Standards: In "Badger's Remedy", when Mole accidentally eats a poisonous toadstool and is gravely ill, even the Weasels help to find the ingredients for the antidote. When Ratty asks the Chief Weasel why he's helping, his response indicates that even he doesn't fancy the idea of somebody dying slowly and painfully, as Mole is at that moment:Chief Weasel: I dunno... I s'pose a straight fight's one thing, or a bang on the 'ead with a cudgel, but... poison... (looks grimly up towards Mole's bedroom window)
- Likewise, in The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the Chief Weasel offers to join in the search for Otter's missing son Portly, as even he has a certain fondness for the child.
Chief Weasel: Nice little chap, that Portly, no side about him...You'd never think 'e was...well, y'know...one o' the nobs. - Everyone Has Standards: In "The Weasels' Trap", Ratty and Mole come immediately to the Chief's aid when he gets his leg caught in a trap. The idea of being trapped at all is so horrific to the animals that they’re willing to set aside their personal prejudices to help.
- Expy: Billy Rabbit. His voice and mannerisms are remarkably similar to Bluebottle from The Goon Show.
- Hedge Maze: "Caught In A Maze" has Toad working on and reopening his late father's hedge maze behind Toad Hall, due to being inspired by Hampton Court's maze. Even Badger, who often scolds him for his foolishness, praises him for a well-done job. He and his friends have fun navigating the hedge maze until Toad decides to use string to cheat, but Mole finds the string and - thinking it'd be useful - picks it up. This gets Toad helplessly lost, so his friends return to the maze and get him back out.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Rat and Mole are the closest to each other. It's implied that Badger and Toad's deceased father were also this.
- Impoverished Patrician: The TV show often had Toad fall for some con the Weasels cooked up so he would have to give them Toad Hall as payment.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: In some episodes, Toad's livelihood is only saved because the weasels are even more incompetent than him.
- It's All About Me: Toad is usually guilty of this. Such as the final episode of season 4, he insists that reading his poem to his guests is more important than helping the two weasels stuck down the hole, when Rat was calling for volunteers.
- Laser-Guided Karma: "The Weasels' Trap" has the Chief Weasel set a potentially lethal beartrap for Badger as revenge for foiling a robbery. He ends up walking into it when his henchman moves it without telling him, injuring himself the same way he'd hoped to hurt Badger.
- Leitmotif: Each character, e.g. Mole, Toad, has a certain musical theme.
- Manchild: Toad's flamboyant but short-lived enthusiasm for his varied crazes are akin to a child being initially excited over a new toy, but getting bored with it pretty quickly.
- Not Me This Time: In "Mercury of the Motorcycle," a caped motorcyclist nearly runs over Billy Rabbit and causes havoc around the Riverbank. Badger, Mole, and Rat believe it's Toad because he switched his interest to motorcycles and shun him despite his attempts to enlist their help. Fortunately, Billy Rabbit realizes it wasn't Toad driving the motorcycle - it was a weasel who had stolen the bike earlier. So Toad confronts the weasels and tries to get his motorcycle back, though his friends also come in a Big Damn Heroes moment and apologize to Toad for their assumptions.
- One-Steve Limit: Enforced by most characters being named after their animal species, unless there's more than one (E.g. Mole and his cousin Auberon Mole), but there are two characters named Billy: a field mouse and a rabbit. Billy Fieldmouse is a focus character in "The Great Steamer", but goes largely unnamed after that episode. Starting in "The Grand Annual Show" almost all references to a Billy are to Billy Rabbit.
- OOC Is Serious Business:
- The end of "Hot Air" has Mole acting a lot like Toad, being obsessed with motorcars (having used Toad's motorcar for catching up with Toad's hot air balloon) and saying "Poop-poop!" It turns out to be a trick on Mole's part, though.
- "The Compleat Bungler" has Toad's latest obsession be fishing. While Mole and Rat go "Oh, Toad!" as usual to his fads, Badger - a usually stern and conservative character - surprisingly encourages Toad to pursue fishing. The others are shocked - even Toad, who asks Badger if he's feeling all right.
- Papa Wolf: Messing with children is one way to anger Mr. Badger. "The Weasels' Trap" has Badger stop the Weasels from robbing Billy Rabbit, daring them to take a sixpence from him instead.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: The weasels rely heavily upon Toad's gullibility and notoriously poor judgment for their disguises, putting noticeably more effort into it the few times they are trying to fool Badger or Ratty instead of Toad. In later episodes, Badger seems to have given up altogether on his hopes that Toad will learn how to see through such paper thin disguises.
- Pet the Dog: As horrible as they can get sometimes, the weasels sometimes help our heroes out, such as finding ingredients to cure Mole, looking for Portly and helping to foil the Stranger's attempt to take over Toad Hall. In "The Rescue", they even shelter a lost field mouse boy for a day, giving him food and teaching him to make bunnies out of napkins, though Ratty and Mole suspect they kidnapped him before they discover the truth. In every case, they seem both genuinely embarrassed about their actions and angrily reject any thanks they are given.
- Poor Communication Kills: When Badger unwittingly manages to evade the Bear Trap set for him, the Henchman decides to move the trap to the other path in the hopes of catching him. He fails to communicate this to the Chief Weasel, however, which ends with the Chief, furiously chasing after Badger, to run right into it.
- "Fighting Fit" reveals that Toad received consultation letters concerning the encroaching railway over a month ago, but stuffed them in his cupboard rather than respond or telling his friends about them. Had he done so, the Riverbankers might have had a chance to prevent the railway coming, but Toad's stupidity means there's no hope of that now.
- Reformed Bully: A surprising (and surprisingly realistic) story arc occurs with the Chief Weasel. Midway through the first season, he is so filled with hate towards Badger that he tries to set a realistically nasty bear trap for Badger only to end up in it himself, and even after Badger discovers that the Chief Weasel had intended it for him, he still frees him. Our heroes express serious doubt that the Chief Weasel will becomes a better person after this, and for that matter, so does the Chief Weasel, but as the series progresses, the Chief Weasel has more and more Pet the Dog moments, nearly always against his will, until it gets to the point that he seldom takes advantage of anyone except Toad who pretty much always deserves it. He never quite reforms, but after Badger rescues him from the bear trap even after knowing he'd set it to hurt Badger, the Chief Weasel is never quite as bad again, either.
- Sore Loser: Toad is a terrible sportsman, and effectively throws tantrums when beaten or outperformed at anything.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Mr Toad tends to be the main focus of most episodes. This is most notable in season 4, where his crazes distract from the story arc about the railway.
- Sympathy for the Devil: The Chief Weasel gets his leg injured in "The Weasels' Trap" and snarks that it must be nice for the heroes to see him in his state. Rat retorts that no, it isn't - not even a thoroughly evil weasel like him deserves to be caught in a trap.
- Ungrateful Bastard: In the first episode, "The Further Adventures of Toad," Rat, Mole, and Badger tell Toad that he has to compensate those he had wronged during his breakout from prison. Toad is offended at the audacity of having to pay them (even the kind jailor's daughter who helped break him out in the first place), and snaps that he could have taken Toad Hall back by himself without his friends. But his friends are disappointed in his thanklessness and decide to leave. Fortunately, Toad regrets his attitude, admits that he wouldn't have gotten Toad Hall back without his friends' help, and agrees to compensate those he had wronged.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Toad gets a blistering one from the others in "Fighting Fit" when it turns out that he'd received consultation letters from the railway company but stuffed them into his cupboard rather than respond to them.Badger: What can one say but...oh, Toad!