A simple fable about nature's vulnerability to the cruel forces of human progress, Jeremy Thomas' disappointingly schematic All The Little Animals spells out its thesis in bold letters early on, leaving precious few revelations to follow. Widely respected as an ambitious, top-flight producer for Nicolas Roeg (Insignificance), David Cronenberg (Naked Lunch), and Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emperor), Thomas reaches for a gentle, poetic lyricism similar to Roeg's Walkabout, but never quite achieves it. Instead, he's left with an obvious melodrama about the kinship between Christian Bale and John Hurt, reclusive societal dropouts bound by their simple love for animals and a need to protect them from harm. After his wealthy mother dies, the emotionally fragile Bale refuses to sign over her London department store to gluttonous stepfather Daniel Benzali. Rather than face Benzali's persistent psychological torment, Bale flees to the Cornwall countryside, where he befriends Hurt, a hermit who spends his days burying roadkill. All The Little Animals has an strangely infantile view of good and evil that may be intentional, but its assumption that nature's destruction is limited to decadent, consumptive rich men comes across as simply naïve. Thomas isn't shy about drawing heavy-handed parallels between the willful destruction of poor, defenseless creatures and the cartoonishly sinister Benzali's sadistic reign over his human prey. Though Bale and Hurt are both terrific actors, their characters are so narrowly defined—the former meek and affected, the latter a raving old coot—that they're reduced to a chorus of ticky mannerisms. All The Little Animals is partially redeemed by Thomas' eye for nature's picturesque beauty, but unlike Roeg or Terrence Malick, he never gets a feel for its rhythms.