In a picturesque mountain village in the Swiss Alps, a property developer named Schnaittinger is working away to convince the naive local inhabitants that his proposal for a new sawmill is just what they need to get their economy humming. In this inoffensive and ultimately uninspiring children’s animation, peppy little tomboy Heidi realises pretty quickly that this self-styled entrepreneur – sample line: “Machines can help us live a better life” – really only cares about his own profit margins.
Heidi and her friend Peter are given an added incentive to foil the bad guy’s dastardly schemes in the form of an adorable baby lynx that would be imperilled by the development of the area. The lynx is cute in that standard no-brainer kid’s animation way, with big eyes and a stumbling gait guaranteed to tap directly into the “preserve and protect” part of your brain. Unfortunately, watching Heidi unravel Schnaittinger’s evil plot is an exercise in well-intentioned narrative predictability. Various narrative curlicues such as Heidi’s outcast grandfather’s redemption in the eyes of the villagers and Heidi’s pen pal Clara showing up in the third act don’t add much jeopardy to matters.
