The baby will be fine. The parents are not well in Spellbound, a computer-animated film streaming on Netflix with a clever premise (what’s a girl to do when her home life is shattered?) and its heart in the right place. If only the film had been transparent about its premise from the beginning, instead of burying the explanation – as a relevant real-world twist – until almost the end.
The film takes place in the fictional kingdom of Lumbria, where a royal couple has been cursed. Once a sensible ruler, King Solon (Javier Bardem) is now a speechless blue monster – albeit a cute cartoon version of a unicorn-sized creature, with an endearing personality and a dog-like personality that is easily distracted. His wife, Queen Ellesmere (Nicole Kidman), has the same problem. Gone was the beautiful-featured matriarch, replaced by a puffy green dragon with pink flamingo feathers, golden horns and ridiculously small wings.
“Spellbound” confronts the couple’s transformation from the perspective of their capable teenage daughter, Princess Elaine (Rachel Ziegler), who sings “My Parents Are Monsters” from the beginning. It’s a clever way to phrase the problem: You may think you’re doing bad, being punished or ignored by your guardians, but Elian’s parents are worse (“like actual monsters”). For the past year, she’s been dealing with the unfair burden of making excuses and cleaning up messes while her folks are off duty.
At this point, if you plug your ears and focus on the bright, bright images, you might think you’re watching a Disney movie. And if you close your eyes, the music (by eight-time Academy Award-winning composer Alan Menken) will surely convince you it’s the Disney movie you’ve been hearing.
In fact, “Spellbound” is the second film from Skydance Animation, a studio that is still establishing itself as where John Lasseter arrived after taking on Pixar. “Spellbound” is a definite improvement over the charming, choppy Skydance debut of 2022, “Luck,” to the point where it feels like it could have been made by the Mouse House.
The look says “Tangled”, the feel is more like “Beauty and the Beast”, and the result is that weird feeling that’s close to but not quite like it’s been worked on so much, it just doesn’t work in the end. Still, you can see what they’re going for — an educational lesson more relevant to today’s kids than any previous princess movie — and the music is so strong (particularly the theme song, “The Way It Was Before”), that a repeat viewing might solve the problem that the film’s point doesn’t It reveals itself only very late.
The project’s vision belongs to Vicki Jenson, best known as one of the two directors of the original “Shrek” film. Here, she brings a more respectful but equally modern approach to the animated story genre while honoring its roots — or at least its renaissance, via the second golden age of hand-drawn Disney animated features, which extended from “The Little Mermaid.” To “Hercules”. What these “new classics” (quite old for this film’s target audience) have in common is Menken, who brought Broadway-style songs into the equation.
All of those movies were musicals, and so is Spellbound, which would certainly have a few No. 1 hits had it premiered on the big screen instead of streaming (“Luck” was sold to Apple TV+, that is. The film is exclusive to Netflix.) The way Jenson presents the story, what would traditionally be the first act – the one preceding the curse – is now presented in chunks throughout the film, with the strongest of those flashbacks addressed in Menken’s best new song, “The Way Things Used to Be.” Before” (in the words of “Tangled” lyricist Glenn Slater).
Nearly half an hour into the film, a drop of water falls on the exposed strings of a broken piano, crushed by one of Solon and Elsmere’s battles. Five times, she plucks the same string, and then, as Eliane passes, a series of drops strike six different notes—a delicate, almost Studio Ghibli-like introduction to her poignant lament. Ziegler, who stars and sings the difficult role (as Disney movies often do two voices), lifts the film in this most magical moment, which felt insecure for most of the first act but now focuses on: Now we understand why Ilian will undertake a dangerous journey to reverse the curse.
Tituss Burgess and Nathan Lane play the seers of the Sun and Moon, who read as a cross between arcane monks and benevolent henchmen, kind enough to leave behind an enchanted keychain that makes moving on early a little easier for Ilian. Accompanied by her adorable pet Flink (a purple hamster-like creature with large eyes and an appetite for insects), Elian is pursued by a pair of Lombrean ministers – the picky castle advisor Polinar (John Lithgow) and the more aggressive Nazara (Jennifer Lewis). ) – who devised a plan to overthrow the king and queen and install the princess in their place.
As Elyan escapes, sparks fly, and Polinar and Flink swap bodies. This destination provides some of the film’s funniest moments, as well as a delightfully silly side number, “I Could Get Used to This,” in which Lithgow gets excited at the idea of eating worms. (Could this year have produced a funnier rhyme than this: “I must say, it’s more than wonderful. How have I lived my whole life without a caterpillar?”?) And now the film has two disengagement spells: the removal of the brutality of Elian’s parents and the return of Polinar to his body. The original.
With no traditional villain, the film relies on something he calls “the darkness,” depicted here as a ribbon tornado of negative emotions, which threatens to corrupt even the positive-minded Eliane. Rather than spoiling what it all means, trust that the final explanation is an intelligent one, with useful lessons to impart about how much children can (or even try) to control when faced with dramatic changes in the family. Ultimately, Jenson’s most radical twist on the fairy tale tradition is the belief that patting down the phrase “happily ever after” is not as useful as providing an example of how to deal with unhappiness.